Our customer is the company providing various tools and products for the development of autonomous driving algorithms and functions; it also specializes in testing and validation. Different companies, which use learning systems in autonomous driving solutions, utilize one of their software systems for efficient data annotation. The customer's need was to implement product extensions in order to support new types of data annotations and achieve faster performance of the labeling application in general.

The GRSE team has provided senior qualification in the C++ / .NET technology stacks to meet the customer's request. Among the relevant tasks, the team has performed research on available libraries for efficient point cloud calculations, which are necessary for data labeling in general. The customer was provided with pros-and-cons analysis, benchmarking results, and integration code samples for the libraries. Subsequent tasks were to implement new types of labeling for lane marking based on third- and fifth-order Bezier curves. All the required features have been developed and integrated into the main software taking into account the customer’s architecture. The GRSE team has seamlessly integrated into the customer's distributed team with the help of the Agile software development process.

The customer is a famous international company producing professional tools and solutions for assembly lines. They were looking for support in maintaining and functionality expansion of their specific software designed for configuration of assembly stations.

GRSE has made multiple extensions and provided support for this software for more than 5 years. During this period multiple new features have been implemented, like operator guidance, pick-to-light function; all these accompanied by large architectural changes—for example, the addition of new server-side and database layers in assembly line configurator software. Configurator software provides configuration services to fine-tune workstations to product models and the assembly workflow. When configuration is done, Configurator creates a set of the XML configuration files, which will be delivered to the workstations. With the help of GRSE team, our customer was/is able to scale software development task-forces necessary to cover growing demands from the end customers. The joint work has helped us build a reliable long-term partnership and form a coherent international team of professionals.

The customer wanted Smart Assembly System to be installed on assembly lines to improve performance of worker operations and decrease the number of potential errors in the assembly process. The smart embedded slave devices were intended for installation at workstations along the assembly lines together with master data collecting gateways at each workstation in order to provide communication between workers and the MES systems.

The GRSE team has designed and implemented a bidirectional communication system between the assembly line master data collecting device and MES Server through MQTT protocol. MODBUS-like communication protocol has also been developed to have smart slave devices connected to the system via master data collecting devices. As part of communication protocol, the team implemented safety mechanisms like summation checks and receiver acknowledgements to detect possible errors in data transmission. The master data collecting device’s logic has been implemented on basis of the classical state-machine approach. The GRSE team has delivered the system, which is now successfully deployed at end-customer plants.

The customer is a company providing hardware/software solution that employs Lean Production principles for car assembly lines. In addition to the development of firmware for their device controllers performed by the GRSE team, the customer asked GRSE for help with frontend implementation of their system. Angular was chosen for the frontend development stack.

The GRSE team was responsible for the frontend in this project. The backend was developed by the customer team. The project requirements were driven by existing end-customers and were, therefore, very agile. This led to the highly-parallel development of both backend and frontend parts. Since different people in different locations were involved in the development process, very tight communication was a prerequisite on the way to implement the required changes in sync. The GRSE team was fully integrated and was often working in accord with customer time-zone hours to be well synchronized. All of these experiences helped us to deliver the new version to the customer plants with the ready-for-production quality just in time.

The customer decided to update the existing access control system based on smart cards. Instead of offline card verification, they needed a real-time card validation. Besides, client terminals were supposed run on different operating systems.

GRSE suggested to perform main logging on a central server, which will secure a set of web services necessary for card validation as well as some additional functionality. Such an approach simplifies the development and testing processes and allows quick expansion of the system in the future. The system was implemented with the following technologies in use: .NET, WCF, MS SQL.

The customer is a leading provider of Video Management Software (VMS) solution with many installations around the world. They were looking for a software development partner to cover fast-growing demand from the market and from their customers.

GRSE has provided a dedicated team of professional developers in a short ramp-up time. The first objective on the customer part was to integrate GRSE people into their development environment and process to start efficient cooperation for the projects. This was accomplished in one month by having workshops together with the customer specialists and by means of the learning-by-doing approach. We started from small bug fixes and then continued with more complex tasks. There were different projects the GRSE team was involved in: ones made by us being a part of the customer team and some other projects processed by ourselves in accord with the customer requirements. There are following work packages in these projects: integration of video surveillance cameras from various camera vendors, implementation of new features of VMS (like virtual matrix, video analytics, efficient search in video streams, etc.), creation of unit-tests with the aim of improving continuous integration coverage.

The customer asked to develop a device that is able to capture VGA input and then save particular frames to different outputs so that they can be displayed on multiple monitors.

The GRSE team has discussed the full project requirements with the customer team. A CPLD-based schematic design and PCB layout have been developed and presented. CPLD design modules using Verilog HDL have been designed. There were the following CPLD functions among those implemented: user input processing while displaying user selection on a LED screen; driving an address bus and control signals to store the current frame across multiple locations in the RAM and retrieving selected frames to selected outputs. CPLD also performs fine-tuning of video processing ASIC via I2C line to achieve the desired quality of pictures. The GRSE team has successfully assembled and tested PCB design.

The customer is a leader in producing high-tech laser cutting and drilling machines with a very high level of precision. They decided to invest in R&D projects and chose GRSE as their partner. The project was about making the research, creating a prototype and then implementing the quality control solution based on processing and analysis of visual information captured by embedded imager sensors.

GRSE had already been involved in cooperation with the customer by that moment and then quite quickly integrated more people with required skills and experience. The team has implemented prototype of image processing algorithms utilizing OpenCV library and CUDA GPU. After certain improvements and optimizations, the key recognition functions were implemented with the specified performance—the goal was achieved. With the assistance of the GRSE team, the customer was able to integrate it into their main control software and then they successfully started using the first version of machine vision functionality which made their products more robust and responsive to even higher quality requirements.

The customer wanted to use an OEE system for their machines, as well as an online data provider to monitor machine statuses (in work, delay, fault, waiting for technician etc.). The machine park consisted of circa 1500 units at five factories. In addition, the customer wanted to have a data provider for the SAP system and an operation tracking system with barcode reader. Some of the machines were equipped with modern CPUs, some had no CPU at all. The data collection system supposed to be the same on all the machines.

Each machine was equipped with a small CoDeSys PLC, I/O board, a barcode reader connected to the PLC, PoE device, and a small HMI panel for the operator. The data transfer from the machines to the application server was implemented over Modbus TCP/IP with OPC Server, where the .NET back-end application was handling it and sending information to the Oracle database. The front-end client application was also developed to let employees obtain all necessary data from the server and build different OEE reports with customizable filters. Transferring from V2 to V3 is in progress now.

The customer needed help with software development for a control system (PLC/SCADA) of polypropylene granulation/storage system. The control process consisted of transport from reactors to the mixing/extrusion/granulation system and further to granulation storage system/packaging. During transportation, the raw materials had to be weighed in accordance with the recipes. The control system had to include the data exchange functionality with the recipe management system and with external PLCs as well.

Due to the customer functional specification, we used the STEP7/WinCC flexible software. Our part was the PLC development for the transportation of granulated material from an extruder to silos and from silos to a buffer hopper/packaging machine. As soon as the commissioning was successfully done, we were contracted for the next extension of this project.

The customer needed help with software development for a control system (PLC/SCADA) pertaining to a tea blending/packaging system. The control process encompassed feeding/mixing/blending/weighing systems. Customer also needed a product recipe tracking system and a recipe reporting system.

Due to the customer functional specification, we used the STEP7/WinCC software. The tracking system was based on the RFID technologies by SIEMENS. The standard WinCC tools were chosen for the recipe management/report system. Commissioning has been done successfully as well as further implementation of some extensions—a new line for a new package type, some visualization improvements etc.

The customer, one of the leading machine manufacturer for rapid PCB prototyping, got an urgent request for integration of their machines into a production line under control of Manufacturing Execution System (MES), i.e. to get production details from the MES system and send production results and supplementary data from machines back to MES. One of the problems/limitations was the lack of a standardized integration API, so the connection layer had to be easily adaptive to the new MES systems.

The GRSE team has analyzed the customer software environment and come up with a solution. Since the customer announced migration of their controlling software to the .NET platform, we consequently opted for .NET as the programming platform. Our team suggested developing a lightweight modular system, in which support for MES could be prepared independently without affecting the core part that handles machine control. The base interface was defined as a COM interface in order to support a certain amount of old machines running under the C/C++ code.