The AVnu Alliance has launched an industrial market segment, joining pro-AV, consumer electronics and the automotive market as its fourth target group. The move coincides with the evolution of its audio-video bridging (AVB) standard into time-sensitive networking.
The industrial market came through AVNu’s work with IEEE.
Alliance leaders say the industrial market, which parallels work they’ve been doing in the automotive segment, is a $150-billion-a-year market and creates a pathway to the future of the Internet of Things.
“The new capabilities of TSN provide the industrial community with the ability to use standard ethernet to support highly reliable and precise synchronized networking appropriate for industrial control,” according to the Alliance’s announcement.
“We have a great community of people and we’re continuing to evolve and add new functionality,” says AVNu Alliance president Rick Kreifeldt. The Alliance will focus on redundancy and fast-control messaging as part of its shift, he says.
As part of the expansion into the industrial market, the AVNu Alliance welcomes Belden, General Electric and National Instruments into the fold, joining companies including Bosch, Cisco and Intel that already have a foothold in the industrial space and are Alliance members.
“This is another market that’s pushing the technology along,” says Kreifeldt. “We’ve got a technology with serious legs and the big markets are pushing it forward.”
The focus on redundancy will be a boost to integrators working in the live sound world, says Kreifeldt, and the fast control emphasis will help those who work in theaters.
Kreifeldt is incredibly pleased with the addition of the industrial segment to the AVNu Alliance, and says there may be other additions down the road.
“We won’t say it’s a final (market segment), but it’s definitely a big one,” he says.
The four markets help the Alliance offer products that help with collaboration and AV streaming and it won’t be long before lighting and motion control are added, says Kreifeldt.
The addition of the industrial segment was vetted by Alliance members, he says.
“We don’t want to spread ourselves too thin and get away from the original mission,” says Kreifeldt. “AVB has a real growth path going on.”
