Interview with Dr Stan Schneider, CEO of Real-Time Innovations, April 2023

I’m CEO of Real-Time Innovations (RTI). RTI is the world’s largest architectural software provider for smart distributed systems. RTI software runs nearly 2000 projects, all of them making real-world “things” run smarter. It does that by connecting devices like sensors and actuators (motors) with smart algorithms and remote operation control centers.

We run some large systems, like the largest power plant in North America (Grand Coulee dam), Siemens wind turbine farms, the Canadian Air Traffic Control system, NASA's launch control system, nearly all US Navy ships, and GE Healthcare's hospital device networks. Most of our business is smaller systems, but all are mission critical. They include many surgical robots, trains and metro control systems, and over 250 autonomous vehicle designs.

Most of these systems have some remote operational control or oversight, so in 2021 I joined the board of the Teloperation Consortium (TC). The Teleoperations Consortium is studying the problem of how to control or direct “real world” systems from afar. I’m also on the board of the Autonomous Vehicle Computing Consortium (AVCC) and the advisory board for the IoT Solutions World Congress. I was on the Industrial IoT Consortium (IIC) Steering Committee for 6 years, including as Vice Chair.

Before founding RTI, I managed a large Stanford University robotics laboratory, led a systems software team for personal computers, and developed software for telecommunications equipment. I started out in the automotive industry, working on safety systems, impact testing, occupant protection, and data acquisition.

I did a PhD in EE/CS at Stanford in autonomous systems at the Stanford Aerospace Robotics Laboratory.