HERCULES project aims at obtaining an order-of-magnitude improvement in the energy efficiency and cost of time-critical embedded systems based on heterogeneous multi-core platforms. The Consortium selected two target applications characterized by both high-performance and real-time requirements, one from the automotive (Self-Driving Cars and related high computation demanding subfields), one from the avionics domain (Image processing for Real-Time detection and tracking of objects on the airfield).
Pitom is supporting the Consortium by leading the Industrial Exploitation Work Package and the overall testing activities with Magneti Marelli and Airbus.
Within the exploitation activities, Pitom is responsible to interact with the Industrial Advisory Board members, that is composed, among others, by BMW, Porsche, Continental, Leonardo-Finmeccanica, Selex ES, Honeywell, Nvidia, ARM, SACMI, Yanmar, Topcon.
Pitom also is responsible for the design and integration of a complete aerial drone system in multi-rotor configuration. The octo-copter integrates proprietary piCORE autopilot technology with the HERCULES Operating System for real-time multi-core embedded platforms. The aerial drone is then capable of autonomous navigation, automatic obstacle detection and avoidance, and automatic detection&tracking of multiple objects at ground. For the first time, all those functions happen in real-time on a single hardware platform, with pioneering safety mechanisms for multi-core platforms.