Category technology

Feb 25: Excelsoft Technologies a global leader in digital learning and assessment solutions, today announced the launch of Saras Assessments in a Box, a compact, plug-and-play assessment appliance designed to enable secure digital examinations anywhere instantly.

Built using Saras Assessment, Excelsoft’s flagship platform, the device enables institutions to set up a fully functional, secure test centre in minutes, with or without internet connectivity. About the size of a matchbox, it eliminates the need for servers or complex IT infrastructure; users simply power it on, connect via Wi-Fi or LAN, and start delivering exams immediately. A single device supports 100+ concurrent candidates, ensuring high-performance exam delivery without bandwidth bottlenecks.

Speaking about the launch, Mr. Dhananjay Sudhanva, Chairman & Managing Director, Excelsoft Technologies, said,

“This marks a paradigm shift in how assessments are delivered. As examination scale increases and access expands, legacy, infrastructure-heavy models are proving inadequate. Saras Assessments in a Box fundamentally changes that equation by reducing the time and cost of setting up secure test centres while enabling a more resilient, inclusive, and reliable assessment experience for end users. Built on our Saras flagship assessment platform, it allows institutions to conduct exams consistently across diverse environments, including national and state-level entrance exams, university and college assessments, recruitment and certification programs, remote and rural initiatives, and temporary or emergency test centres.”

From a technology and architecture standpoint, the innovation reflects Excelsoft’s focus on building assessment systems designed for real-world conditions.

Speaking about the innovation, Mr. Adarsh Sudhindra, Chief Innovation Officer, Excelsoft Technologies, said,

“Assessment technology must be engineered for reliability at scale, not continuous connectivity. Saras Assessments in a Box introduces a distributed, appliance-led architecture that simplifies deployment while strengthening security and performance. By enabling exams to run locally yet remain centrally governed, institutions can conduct high-stakes assessments consistently across diverse environments without being constrained by infrastructure limitations. The solution is designed for a wide range of use cases, including national and state-level entrance examinations, university and college assessments, recruitment and certification programs, remote and rural assessment initiatives, corporate and skill-based testing, and temporary or emergency test centres.”

With this launch, Excelsoft Technologies continues to lead innovation in the assessment sector delivering solutions that simplify complexity, expand access, and enable secure, scalable, and resilient digital examinations anywhere in the world.

Rail brakes support fast roller changes in laminating units

 SAUERESSIG has evolved from being a manufacturer of printing and embossing rollers to becoming a highly innovative machine manufacturer with a diverse product range.

In a large laminating unit by SAUERESSIG Engineering for laminating steel strip on both sides, rubber rollers press a protective PET film onto hot steel strip. Despite cooling, these rubber rollers do wear down and need to be replaced regularly. Four profiled rail brakes by mayr® power transmission ensure that the laminating process, which takes place 24 hours a day, only has to be interrupted briefly to replace the rollers.

SAUERESSIG began manufacturing printing and embossing rollers for the packaging and printing industry around 70 years ago. Today, the company is a highly innovative mechanical engineering company with a diverse portfolio. As a leading full-range supplier of calendering, embossing and rotary processing systems in standard and special designs, the company supplies a wide range of industries.

The machine solutions include both complete production lines and customized systems for embossing, finishing, coating, smoothing, perforating and calibrating sheet materials such as paper, film or metal sheets. The company offers comprehensive expertise from the initial idea to the final customized solution, including planning and designing mechanics, drive and automation technology, pre-assembly and commissioning in the factory, and final approval at the customer’s premises.

SAUERESSIG’s large laminating unit coats both sides of the steel strip with a protective PET film

 One such customized system, no less than six metres long and around four metres wide, coats a steel strip on both sides with a thin protective PET film. Harald Bartsch, Head of Design/Expert Advisor at SAUERESSIG Engineering, describes the machine’s design concept as follows “The complete laminating unit consists of two nearly identical, symmetrically arranged side frames, each with a rubberized laminating roller and a contact cooling roller. For laminating, the steel strip moves vertically between the two laminating rollers through the laminating unit at a conveying speed of up to 250 m/min. The laminating rollers press the film onto the hot steel strip from both sides.”

The steel strip’s high temperatures of up to 260 °C heat up the rubber coating on the laminating rollers. Water-cooled contact rollers dissipate this heat and limit the rubber coating’s temperature to a maximum of 90 °C. Despite the cooling, the rubber linings of the laminating rollers are subject to wear and must be replaced regularly. “As the laminating process should ideally be running continuously all year round and 24/7 without interruption,” explains Harald Bartsch, “the time required to replace the laminating rollers must be kept as short as possible. Therefore, the laminating unit is designed in such a way that the automated roller replacement only takes half an hour.”

The laminating unit consists of two symmetrically arranged side frames. Both side frames are mounted onto profiled rail guides and can be separated axially to replace the worn laminating rollers. While the coating process is in progress, profiled rail brake of the ROBA® guidestop® series by mayr® power transmission hold the two system parts in position backlash-free and with high rigidity. To replace the rollers, these safety brakes are released hydraulically, the two machine halves can be moved apart via rack and pinion gears and the laminating rollers can be replaced.

Profiled rail brake of the ROBA® guidestop® series by mayr® power transmission hold the two system parts of a large laminating unit in position backlash-free and with high rigidity.

 The ROBA® guidestop® profiled rail brake serves as a reliable safety brake and backlash-free clamping unit. It can brake movements safely and quickly and clamps the axes rigidly and backlash-free.

Just like all safety brakes by mayr®power transmission, the profiled rail brakes also work according to the fail-safe principle. This means they are closed in de-energised condition. The ROBA® guidestop® brakes use pre-tensioned cup springs to press the brake shoes against the ‘waist’ of the profiled rail, thus clamping it in place.

The hydraulic brake design used in the SAUERESSIG laminating unit is released using a nominal pressure of 70 bar. This is comparatively low in relation to the very high holding forces. The brake mechanism is dimensioned for relatively large strokes. As a result, the brake can compensate for production tolerances on the profiled rails without losing braking force. The ROBA® guidestop® safety brakes are equipped with two independent brake circuits: This allows for either double holding forces or a redundant design.

The profiled rail brakes are therefore directly mounted onto the masses which are to be braked or held. This minimises the risk of hazards, particularly with gravity-loaded axles, as drive elements between the motor and the moving mass, such as spindles, spindle nuts, shaft couplings and gears, do not affect safety. This is different for concepts with motor brakes, as all drive elements must transmit the braking torque to the carriage. Furthermore, every element between the brake and the carriage has a negative effect on rigidity. ROBA® guidestop® safety brakes are therefore considerably more rigid than motor brakes, rod brakes or band brakes, which are often subject to backlash.

ROBA® guidestop® safety brakes by mayr® power transmission are available in pneumatic or electromagnetic versions in addition to the hydraulically opening design. The hydraulically releasing ROBA® guidestop® series covers nominal holding forces from 5000 to 34000 N with four sizes. The pneumatically releasing version offers the greatest variety of options: Six sizes with nominal holding forces from 700 to 15000 N are available in the standard product range. Both versions (i.e. pneumatically and hydraulically releasing) are available for all common linear guides. Electromagnetically opening rail brakes do not require any pneumatic or hydraulic equipment. mayr® power transmission developes this variant on request, customizing it for the respective application.

GAINESVILLE, Fla., Feb. 25: Caspia Technologies announced broad availability of its flagship security verification product CODAx. New and unique capabilities delivered by the product were described, along with its impact on the customer base. The company also provided a preview of its plans to build agentic security verification workflows.

CODAx is Caspia’s security-aware auditing solution that analyzes early (RTL) code of IP/SoC designs to detect coding styles that can introduce security vulnerabilities. Over 150 insecure coding practices are recognized and suggested corrections are also provided.

CODAx security checks are informed by public vulnerability databases including CWE, CVE, and Trust-Hub, which catalog over 1,000 known hardware security weaknesses. Caspia applies GenAI techniques to systematically map these weaknesses to detectable RTL coding patterns.

The latest release of CODAx, V2026.1 provides deeper security checks that span across the design hierarchy, enabling identification of weaknesses that travel up and across design modules. The company reported that comprehensive stress testing was performed on this release with 10,000+ intentionally vulnerable designs.

Caspia also reported that a popular open-source root-of-trust design containing 400+ design files, approximately 3 million gates, and 500,000 lines of RTL code was analyzed by CODAx in about 45 minutes. Multiple security weaknesses were found during this analysis.

Caspia has been working with all the major EDA suppliers to ensure a smooth integration of its tools with existing design flows. The company also reported that major chip and system companies from around the world are successfully deploying CODAx for designs that support applications such as automotive, data center, communication, storage, multimedia, precision analog and embedded computing.

Caspia announced that Stuart Audley has joined the company as VP/GM of product management, with a focus on agentic security workflows. Audley brings decades of experience designing and deploying cryptographic hardware and security IP for top defense primes and leading semiconductor companies. He previously led advanced security platform development for FPGAs and ASICs at The Athena Group, Inc. and Mercury Systems.

“We are expanding our security verification footprint to include both advanced tools and enablement of agentic workflows,” said Rick Hegberg, CEO of Caspia. “I am delighted to add someone with Stuart’s experience and background to the team. This will ensure we can focus on delivering cutting-edge capabilities and AI-driven security automation.”

“Caspia is evolving from a provider of point security verification tools to an agentic platform supplier where AI orchestrates comprehensive hardware security workflows,” said Audley.

He went on to say, “the elements of our plan include unifying all our tools with AI-assisted workflows that span the entire hardware security lifecycle: analyzing RTL, identifying vulnerabilities, and verifying the results.

Traditional design flows remain fully supported, but we are creating a new category for agentic-enabled hardware security verification.”

Caspia will present its latest technology in booth 702 at DVCon on March 2-5, 2026, to be held at the Santa Clara Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, CA. 

Toronto, Canada – February 25, 2026; Insurance is complicated. Customers have questions before they quote, need guidance after, and expect clarity when they file a claim. But the work of answering those questions, collecting documents, and following up still runs on calls, emails, and portals stitched together by manual effort. For brokers and carriers, this coordination overhead is one of the most operationally expensive and taxing parts of the business.

 General Magic is building AI agents to solve this problem.

 The company announced a US$7.2M seed funding round led by Radical Ventures, with significant participation from a16z Speedrun and new investment from Figma VP of Product Brendan O’Driscoll and Larry James Erwin from OpenAI. The company has raised $8.4M to date, backed by Radical Ventures, a16z Speedrun, and Comma Capital, along with operators who have built foundational AI and product platforms, including Aidan Gomez, CEO of Cohere, as well as the executive team at Braze, including Kevin Wang, Chief Product Officer, and Spencer Burke, SVP of Growth.

 General Magic builds AI agents that take over the work insurance teams spend the most time on: answering routine questions, collecting documents, and following up with customers when clarity matters. These agents work across the full insurance lifecycle, covering pre-quote eligibility, post quote engagement, and claims coordination. They do all of this while connecting directly to broker management systems, quoting platforms, and CRMs. 

 Early deployments show what’s possible. Working with one of the world’s largest general insurers, General Magic has reduced time-to-quote from roughly 30 minutes down to under 3 minutes via its SMS-based agent. 

 “Too much of insurance still relies on manual follow through across calls, inboxes, and scattered systems,” said Jai Mansukhani, Co Founder and President of General Magic. “We focus on keeping customers engaged at every stage of the lifecycle, not just at quote or claim. Our agents handle the routine work that slows teams down, while giving insurance leaders real visibility into what customers are asking, where they are getting stuck, and how they are feeling. When that engagement and data flow directly into core systems, teams move faster and customers feel genuinely supported.”

 The company’s agentic offerings are centered around a product called Cell, a proactive AI agent that connects directly to the systems insurance teams already use. Cell integrates with broker management systems, quoting and rating platforms and CRMs to support teams. It can be deployed across SMS, iMessage and RCS, and can extend into policy, billing and claims workflows as needed.

When a customer has a question, they can text Cell over SMS, or the insurance team can proactively deploy it to the customer. The agent responds using real system data, asks for missing information, follows up automatically, and updates records as workflows progress. Conversations stay in one thread, context is preserved, and customers move forward at their own pace without being chased or dropped.

 Early deployments point to the scale of the opportunity. In early rollouts with large personal lines insurers, General Magic is reducing the time required to generate and finalize quotes from roughly 30 minutes to about 3 minutes by automating routine clarification and follow-ups over SMS across auto and life insurance workflows. This increase in speed expands effective quoting capacity while keeping customers engaged through the most failure prone part of the journey after a quote is issued. By handling frequent questions and coordination over text, the agent reduces delays and prevents conversations from stalling. General Magic is currently supporting deployments with carriers across auto and life insurance, where post-quote and customer coordination are most critical.

 In parallel, the team is focused on building agents that understand the realities of insurance distribution, including licensing and regulatory frameworks such as RIBO, OTL, and other broker and advisor exams. By specializing agents around how licensed professionals are trained to communicate, General Magic aims to ensure conversations feel accurate, compliant, and aligned with how insurance teams actually explain coverage to customers.

 General Magic was founded by Anthony Azrak and Jai Mansukhani, second-time founders who previously sold AI products into legacy industries. The company’s move into insurance came from firsthand frustration. After a water leak spiraled into weeks of calls, delays, and higher premiums, the founders began exploring how common this experience really was. What they found was an industry that technically works, but often fails customers and intermediaries in the moments that matter most. That insight shaped General Magic’s decision to go deep into insurance rather than remain a horizontal AI platform.

 The broader industry context underscores the urgency. Retention rates in insurance lag behind other sectors, and acquiring new customers costs significantly more than keeping existing ones. As digital distribution accelerates and customers shop more aggressively at renewal, both carriers and brokers that fail to improve post-quote engagement risk losing revenue they already worked to win.

Looking ahead, General Magic plans to expand across insurance lines and workflows, staying focused on moments where customer intent is high and coordination most often breaks down. The platform is being built to support high impact workflows across the insurance stack, prioritising areas where follow-through fails today and where fixing it creates meaningful value for customers, brokers, and carriers.

 The long term vision is simple but ambitious: make follow through automatic, reliable, and invisible. By removing the need for manual chasing and fragmented handoffs, teams can spend less time managing processes and more time serving end customers. The team is motivated by solving complex, real world problems that sit at the center of insurance operations, with the goal of delivering tangible improvements to how people experience insurance when it matters most.

 Sanjana Basu, partner at Radical Ventures, commented: “Most of the world’s financial and insurance data is locked inside rigid, legacy systems that were never designed for the AI era. General Magic isn’t trying to convince enterprises to throw away that infrastructure. Instead, they are giving them a way to finally talk to it. By building a reasoning layer that sits on top of existing systems of record, the General Magic team are unlocking a massive amount of trapped value. This is how the Fortune 500 becomes AI-native. Not by rebuilding from scratch, but by bridging the gap between old data and new intelligence.” 

Troy Kirwin, investment partner at a16z Speedrun, added: “We’ve watched Anthony and Jai grow exponentially both during their speedrun cohort and in the months after. They are building a truly compelling product that we believe will revolutionize workflows across insurance carriers and brokerages globally. I have a personal thesis that outsiders will disrupt legacy industries, and General Magic has helped buttress this thesis with the immense progress they’ve made. We are excited to deepen our partnership through supporting their seed round.” 

Pete Tessier, BFA, CAIB, President at insurance MGA Taycon Risk, added: “What I have seen with General Magic and their approach to AI was a willingness to adapt to the insurance industry’s needs. This is significant because of the varied nuances of the insurance industry and how its products are distributed, and why internal and external customer journeys are different. The challenge will be making it scale across all channels of insurance product distribution. This might be the first true ‘game changer’ for the industry and deliver on customer experience and expectations” 

Switzerland, Feb 24 — The Hashgraph Group (THG), the Swiss-based Web3 and AI technology engineering company operating within the Hedera ecosystem, has today announced the launch of TrackTrace, deployed as a fully managed enterprise-grade solution that transforms and enhances global supply chain transparency through real-time tracking of products from origin, ethical sourcing, and carbon emissions data.

TrackTrace enables the certification of product authenticity and immutable data audit trails, while providing end-to-end transparency and traceability through cryptographically verified decentralized identifiers (DIDs). The platform creates verifiable audit trails of product-specific data, sustainability credentials, durability, reparability, and various other product data, while applying Agentic AI for workflow automation and compliant DPP reporting.

TrackTrace enables the linkage between physical events and digital records in a tamper-proof environment by integrating THG’s existing product IDTrust to provide decentralized identity and verifiable credentials, with digital executable business processes and immutable data audit trails anchored on Hedera – the world’s leading and most energy-efficient distributed ledger technology (DLT) that is governed by a council of leading global organisations such as Dell, Deutsche Telecom, EDF, FedEx, Google, Hitachi, IBM, Mondelēz, and Standard Bank, just to name a few of the over 30 Hedera Council members.

Built for enterprises, TrackTrace supports compliance with the EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), which introduces mandatory sustainability and circularity norms across various regulated product categories. The requirement for a digital product passport applies to all products, including all components and intermediate products manufactured or put into operation in the EU. Under the ESPR framework, all products will require a digital record, typically accessed via QR code, containing data on a product’s origin, composition, sustainability credentials, and lifecycle.

The Hashgraph Group’s efforts to evolve in accordance with regulatory changes are echoed across the Hedera ecosystem, with the recent announcement by FedEx that it has joined the Hedera Council to advance trusted digital infrastructure for global shipments and the future of digital global supply chains. TrackTrace is designed and built to enable the digital evolution of global supply chains by leveraging the convergence of agentic intelligence and workflow automation with decentralization and trusted data infrastructure, offering enhanced digital visibility, governance, and compliance across entire product lifecycles and environments.

“The European Green Deal strives to establish the first climate-neutral continent by 2050 and needs infrastructure it can trust to transform Europe into a modern, efficient, and sustainable, economy,” said Stefan Deiss, Co-Founder & CEO at The Hashgraph Group. “With TrackTrace built on Hedera, we deliver that critical trust data infrastructure layer that enables companies to comply with DPP regulation, while strengthening global supply chain integrity and fostering the transition to a sustainable, transparent, and circular economy.”

Set to come into force in 2027, the DPP regulation will apply to categories including textiles, construction materials, batteries and electronics, fundamentally reshaping how products are designed, tracked, and reported across the European market. For businesses targeting the EU market, DPP becomes a strategic priority that requires urgent focus to ensure compliance with the ESPR. According to PwC, the DPP initiative will redefine how products are designed, produced, recycled, and managed across the EU. THG and PwC are already collaborating with enterprises that need to implement DPP in compliance with ESPR, leveraging TrackTrace to provide transparency, traceability, and auditability across the entire lifecycle of a product.

Micha Roon, Head of Engineering at The Hashgraph Group said, “In designing TrackTrace, we prioritized interoperability to ensure it communicates seamlessly with existing enterprise ERPs and diverse supply chain standards. We have embedded GDPR compliance by design, allowing businesses to share mandatory compliance data without exposing any sensitive intellectual property or personal information. Ultimately, our architecture leverages Hedera’s consensus algorithm to deliver quantum-resistant data security, ensuring that every digital product passport is both immutable and verifiable across global supply chain borders.”

The digital product passport also has implications for global trade since it does not only affect companies based in the EU. For instance, all products exported into the EU market, regardless of the country of manufacture, must have a corresponding DPP. For companies seeking to maintain market access, export products, and remain competitive within the EU market, time is of the essence to integrate DPP now into their product strategy, design, and operations.

Designed for deployment in space-constrained industrial robotic solutions, the de next-RAP8-EZBOX packs 13th Gen Intel Core processing into a system measuring just 95.5mm x 69.5mm x 42.5mm.

(Taipei, Taiwan – Feb 24) Edge computing leader AAEON (Stock Code: 6579) announced another breakthrough with the release of the de next-RAP8-EZBOX, the world’s smallest embedded PC powered by 13^th Generation Intel® Core™ Processors.

Measuring just 95.5mm x 69.5mm x 42.5mm with a heatsink, and 95.5mm x 69.5mm x 45.4mm with an active cooler, the de next-RAP8-EZBOX is designed for deployment in space-constrained autonomous systems or as the central controller within industrial robots.

The system comes with the 10-core, 12-thread Intel® Core™ i7-1365UE processor (formerly Raptor Lake), Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics, and 16GB of soldered LPDDR5x system memory. Despite its small size and relatively high processing capabilities, the de next-RAP8-EZBOX provides a range of I/Os designed to connect and coordinate with various robotics subsystems. For example, the system comes with two LAN ports, one for GbE and one for 2.5GbE speed, joined by two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports. Rounding off its physical interfaces is an HDMI 1.2a port. Meanwhile, the de next-RAP8-EZBOX’s storage comes via an M.2 2280 M-Key slot.

The de next-RAP8-EZBOX is available with both fan-assisted and passive heatsink cooling options, making it possible to integrate the system into fully sealed enclosures without the risk of overheating. Moreover, the system’s 15W performance hybrid architecture CPU and LPDDR5x system memory both minimize heat output and energy draw, preventing excessive thermal buildup during extended periods of operation.

Despite it being a new release, the product has already seen a great deal of attention, winning a Taiwan Excellence Award for its innovative design and market potential, particularly with respect to its potential use in space-constrained autonomous systems or as a central controller within industrial robots.

The system offers broad compatibility with operating systems, including Windows® 10 and Ubuntu 22.04.3 (Kernel 6.2).

New Delhi, Feb 24: Sapaad, a bootstrapped, Make-in-India cloud-based restaurant technology company with a strong global footprint, today announced its participation at AAHAR 2026, to be held from 10th – 14th March, 2026 at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi. At the upcoming edition of India’s leading food and hospitality industry exhibition, Sapaad will showcase its enterprise-grade, cloud-native restaurant technology solutions designed to support the evolving needs of organised and growth-focused foodservice brands across the country.

Vishnu Vardhan Madabhushi, Founder & CEO, Sapaad, said, “Across global and Indian markets, the foodservice industry is being reshaped by rising operational complexity, multi-channel demand and cost pressures, making real-time visibility and data-led decision-making critical for sustainable growth. In India, high-growth formats such as cloud kitchens, QSRs and café chains are expected to grow at around 12–14% CAGR, compared to 5–7% for unorganised formats, highlighting the need for scalable, enterprise-grade digital infrastructure. At AAHAR 2026, we will showcase our unified, cloud-native platform with live demonstrations, highlighting how restaurant brands can streamline operations and leverage AI-driven insights to build scalable, future-ready businesses. With our interactive conversational tool and a unified one-stack platform, we plan to capture at least 8 to 10% of India’s organised food services space by 2030.

After a decade of successful global operations, the company has entered the Indian market to bring its proven technology solutions to support the country’s rapidly growing food services sector. India’s organized food services market is expected to reach approx. US$120–125 billion by 2030, from an estimated US$78 billion in 2025 with roughly 60% absolute growth over the period. The company’s participation in AAHAR 2026 aligns with its broader India market strategy, which focuses on serving the organised and technology-ready segment of the country’s foodservice ecosystem and enabling operators to adopt scalable, reliable and future-ready digital infrastructure.

At AAHAR 2026, Sapaad will present live demonstrations of its solutions – Cloud-Native Restaurant POS its unique AI conversational BI tool Ask Vantage. Built inside Sapaad’s Unified Commerce platform, Ask Vantage analyses real-time signals across POS, inventory, recipes, purchasing, labour, and delivery channels, delivering actionable intelligence on the go. Sapaad’s solutions play a critical role in enabling restaurants, cafés and QSR chains, cloud kitchens and multi-outlet brands to digitise and streamline end-to-end operations, from ordering and payments to kitchen operations, inventory, analytics and AI-driven decision support.

Sapaad will be exhibiting at AAHAR 2026 in Hall 14 – First Floor (14FF), Booth No. 14F-12-D. Alongside live demonstrations, visitors will have the opportunity to engage with the company’s leadership and product teams, and discover Sapaad’s modular cloud-first platform enables multi-format restaurant operations and scalable digital infrastructure for both Indian and international food service brands.

Driver redesign led by Bootlin sees GPIO forwarder library and pinctrl driver merged into Linux 6.18 release. 

(Eindhoven, The Netherlands – Feb 23) AAEON’s UP brand, a leading provider of professional developer boards, is excited to announce that full Linux kernel support for its UP Squared series’ 40-pin I/O header has been officially merged into the Linux 6.18 release.

Following the brand’s 10-year anniversary last May, UP outlined its intention to complete the upstreaming of its DKMS drivers to the Linux mainline kernel. This objective was part of a broader set of initiatives aimed at providing users with a more streamlined route from concept to project deployment.

Upstream support is a goal that AAEON had been working towards for a number of years. However, coordinating the FPGA and Intel® SoCs on UP hardware has made mainline Linux support for the 40-pin header a challenge.

To resolve this issue and assist in pushing the project to completion, AAEON approached Bootlin, a leading embedded Linux and open-source development company. Bootlin’s embedded Linux development expertise was instrumental in resolving the pain points encountered during previous attempts to upstream support for its 40-pin header. By rewriting the pinctrl driver to remove Intel-specific code, adding a GPIO forwarder library, and extending the gpio-aggregator driver to create a reusable library, full upstream support was achieved. As a result, the UP Squared series’ 40-pin header now supports GPIO, I²C, UART, and SPI out-of-the-box on mainline Linux 6.18.

“This achievement is the result of a multi-year effort and close collaboration with Bootlin, and one that will provide a huge benefit to the entire UP community,” said Victor Lai, Managing Director of UP and AAEON Europe. “With upstream integration for our UP Squared series now established, we are already working hard to expand this support across our product family and help even more users transform their ideas into real-world successes.”

ARE report finds JSW Energy and Tata Power best positioned for firm-power era; NTPC’s execution critical as coal economics tighten 

SINGAPORE / NEW DELHI, INDIA, Feb 23 - India’s power sector is entering a decisive new phase as electricity demand surges, peak loads hit record highs, and the country moves toward its 500GW non-fossil capacity target by 2030 post a record 52GW capacity added in FY26But the next chapter of the transition will not be defined by installed capacity alone. 

A new report by Asia Research & Engagement (ARE), Powering Net Zero: Pathways to Clean Energy for India’s Utility Companies, finds that the market is shifting toward firm, dispatchable and availability-linked power — creating clear divergence among India’s largest listed utilities. 

The analysis identifies: 

• JSW Energy and Tata Power as best placed to monetise the transition, combining contracted renewable growth, storage depth and improving cashflow quality. 
• Adani Green Energy remains the fastest capacity scaler with strong long-term visibility, though storage integration remains at an early stage. 
• NTPC, India’s largest generator, retains unmatched scale and sovereign-backed financing, but its transition outcomes hinge on execution speed and managing coal’s declining role. 
• Adani Power remains predominantly thermal, with limited exposure to the structural upside from renewables and storage. 

The report also highlights tightening coal economics. While new ultra-supercritical coal plants clear bids at INR5. 5–6 per kWh, effective delivered costs rise materially once utilisation, fuel volatility and compliance costs are factored in. By comparison, round-the-clock and storage-backed renewable projects are clearing between INR2.7–5.1 per kWh with availability guarantees embedded in contracts. 

“The debate is no longer coal versus renewables,” said Arun Kumar, Strategic Advisor for Power Markets & Technology Innovation at ARE and lead author of the report. “As procurement shifts toward round-the-clock supply, reliability and execution — not just megawatts — will determine competitive advantage.” 

 “While this ARE study highlights significant momentum across the sector, it also identifies areas where sharper strategic clarity, improved contracting frameworks, and stronger delivery capabilities will be essential to meeting India’s long-term decarbonisation goals.” 

One of the most advanced bike-fitting studios worldwide is tapping into the benefit of Flir thermal imaging technology to push the boundaries of sports science and biomechanics at all levels of cycling.

Located in Antwerp, Belgium, Bikefit Van Staeyen uses Flir-generated infrared images to visualize body heat and pressure distribution in real time, subsequently optimizing rider position and bike set up.

Bikefit Van Staeyen offers professional bike fitting based on more than 20 years of experience in cycling. Founded by brothers Kevin and Michael Van Staeyen (a former professional road racing cyclist), the business has built its success on extensive expertise in sports science, biomechanics and cycling. What started as a passion for precision and performance evolved into one of the world’s most advanced bike-fitting studios.

The principal differentiator of Bikefit Van Staeyen is its dual-expert approach: every bike fit is performed by both brothers working together, merging technical analysis and professional cycling experience with medical understanding.

“This synergy allows us to identify patterns and dysfunctions far beyond what conventional systems can capture,” explains Kevin.

Real-time insight

Central to the process is the use of advanced thermal imaging technology from Flir, which provides a real-time view into physiological asymmetries, pressure distribution, and underlying muscular imbalances. 

“We use a Flir infrared camera to study a heat map of a rider pedaling to optimize body position and bike set up,” says Kevin. “By combining thermography with motion tracking, force analysis, and EMG [electromyographic] data, we can see what others can only guess: how the rider’s body reacts, compensates, and adapts under load. We’ve named our thermography application ‘Lava.flow’, a process that allows us to understand and optimize injury-prone areas, muscle activation, and pressure points in a completely new way.”

Bikefit Van Staeyen initially used a Flir E76 thermal imaging camera but has since migrated to the newer E96. The E96 is Flir’s first pistol-grip camera with 640 × 480 thermal resolution, allowing users to survey targets safely and quickly. This advanced sensor offers complete coverage of near and distant targets through a range of lens options. In addition, Flir Ignite provides the automatic uploading of E96 images directly from the camera to the cloud for easy, secure storage and sharing.

As pioneers in thermal analysis for cycling applications, Bikefit Van Staeyen works in close collaboration with Thermal Focus, a Flir Platinum Partner and stockist of the largest selection of Flir infrared cameras in the Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg) region.

Temperature in focus

The hot spots and cold spots identified by Flir thermal cameras serve as direct indicators of how a cyclist’s body functions on the bike. An excessive temperature increase in certain areas can indicate overexertion, friction, or poor posture. 

Using the Flir E96, Bikefit Van Staeyen can: detect hot spots and elevated pressure zones on the saddle, shoes, or handlebars; identify asymmetric muscle loading and unbalanced activation patterns; analyze vascular restrictions that may lead to numbness or reduced performance; and detect thermal irregularities that could indicate overload.

With this in-depth thermal analysis, the brothers are able to identify a range of issues that prompt adjustments for the optimal riding experience. For instance, asymmetric heat distribution around the kneecap points to a possible biomechanical problem, while too much heat in the ball of the foot typically means incorrect positioning of the cleat position. Similarly, increased temperature in the lower back could be the result of a compensatory mechanism or incorrect saddle adjustment.

“While traditional bike fits are often based on observation and feel, we use objective, data-driven measurements from the Flir thermal camera,” reveals Kevin. “Our Lava.flow process gives us unique, real-time insight into how a rider’s body responds while cycling. By way of example, we recently helped a cyclist experiencing unexplained knee pain during rides. Using our Flir infrared imaging technology, we observed excessive heat accumulation in the tibia [tibialis anterior muscle]. Thanks to the Flir imaging of this increased heat and our leg length software, we discovered that this leg was structurally shorter and that the rider had to pull the pedal excessively upward when cycling, resulting in knee pain.”

All levels of cyclist

Cyclists turning to Bikefit Van Staeyen for assistance range from dedicated amateurs to World Tour professionals. They trust the company for the same reason: attention to detail. From saddle pressure to neural load; from crank dynamics to thermal asymmetry – no variable is left unexplored. The company is also pioneering the bike-fit domain at university level, a first in Europe, by collaborating with the University of Antwerp to integrate data-driven approaches.

“We want to serve as the fundamental partner and reference point for thermal camera technology within the sport of cycling,” concludes Kevin. “Our ambition is to help shape the future of performance diagnostics, not just for our own athletes, but as a knowledge and technology hub for teams and riders worldwide. With our expertise and experience we can demonstrate the immense potential of thermography in biomechanical and performance analysis.”