Hello,
On 1/2/25 23:52, Alan C. Assis wrote:
Hi Yousif,
This is the kind of feedback we like to hear! Thank you for that!
NuttX is used in many areas including critical real-time applications.
So, if your question is: Is NuttX safe enough to be used in medical
application, the answer is YES!
NO. it is not, by design, and I am glad it is not, otherwise I would
freak every night that someone could die because of my contributions.
Apache licence here: https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 says:
*7. Disclaimer of Warranty*. Unless required by applicable law or agreed
to in writing, Licensor provides the Work (and each Contributor provides
its Contributions) on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS
OF ANY KIND, either express or implied, including, without limitation,
any warranties or conditions of TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT,
MERCHANTABILITY, or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. You are solely
responsible for determining the appropriateness of using or
redistributing the Work and assume any risks associated with Your
exercise of permissions under this License.
So no, by license there are ABSOLUTELY NO GUARANTEE, and not even remotely.
It is used in drone, rockets (search for NuttX land in the moon),
robot, smartwatch, appliances, cars, etc. Recently it received
critical safety application certification for automative usage (I
cannot say the company name, but they will announce it soon).
That is cool. Good point in the right direction, however this is less
stringent than medical stuff.
https://developer.sony.com/posts/apache-nuttx-powers-worlds-smallest-lunar-robot-in-japans-historic-autonomous-lunar-exploration-mission
I do not read that NuttX powered the flight computer, and so it did not
land on the moon. To my knowledge, it selected pictures in a
nuttx-powered imaging payload. Correct me if I am wrong, that would be
awesome to get me wrong, but it also reassures me that my contributions
did not risk the fate of a moon landing.
For sure there are medical devices using NuttX, how do I now that?
Because on 2021 an institute found issues on medical devices RTOSes
and NuttX was included:
https://www.bfarm.de/SharedDocs/Risikoinformationen/Medizinprodukte/EN/vulnerabilities_realtime_os.html?nn=968830
Quoting the page:
The BfArM points out critical vulnerabilities in the real-time operating
systems of various venders. Details can be found here:
https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ics/advisories/icsa-21-119-04
<https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ics/advisories/icsa-21-119-04>
Affected products are:
* Amazon FreeRTOS, Version 10.4.1
* Apache Nuttx OS, Version 9.1.0
So probably not the best ad for nuttx in medical devices.
And bit below:
Real-time operating systems – especially QNX und VxWorks – are used in
many medical devices;
The list looks generic. Again maybe i am wrong, yes I have read the URL.
If your company decide to use NuttX, please talk about it in our NuttX
Conference (NuttX International Workshop), this way more people with
have confidence to use NuttX on medical devices too!
That would be frightening, to be honest. Participating in a conference
is NOT a safety certification.
Such a medical device would require MANY certifications by independent
bodies, and it would likely require many audits to ascertain the safety
of the OS for life critical applications.
Also, certification of ONE device run by NuttX will NEVER mean that
NuttX is generally safe whatever the product.
I do not want anyone killed because of NuttX, and indirectly by my
contributions. So safety and prudence is of utmost importance here.
So: not impossible, but that would be some huge development and testing
work, and safety is definitely not built in in NuttX.
Safety is per-product and any use of NuttX in a safety product requires
certification work. The facts described by Alan are useful in showing
that it can be achieved somewhat, but nothing more.
Sebastien
BR,
Alan
On Friday, January 3, 2025, Yousif Askar <yousif.as...@bd.com.invalid>
wrote:
Hello!
My name is Yousif Askar, and I'm a software engineer at the global
medical device company Becton, Dickinson, & Co. My team and I
discovered NuttX recently and were wondering if it was utilized in
the medical device industry often? We know it to be a wonderful
low-powered RTOS but are not sure the types of industries in which
it is utilized, as I have not been able to find any documentation
online outlining such information.
Thank you!
*Yousif Askar */(he/him) /
/Software Engineer/
/UCC/
_Yousif.Askar@bd.com_
_
_
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