TRON Forum
TRON Forum (Location: Shinagawa, Tokyo, Chair: Ken Sakamura, Professor of the University of Tokyo) has been established in 2002 to promote TRON Project which aims to realize the open IoT (Internet of Things) free from constraints of organizations and applications based on “open source,” “open data” and “open API.” The forum has conducted vigorous activities led by Chair Sakamura focusing on T-Engine Project that aims to improve the development environment of embedded systems and operating Ubiquitous ID Center which promotes and disseminates ubiquitous ID architecture and its component technologies such as ucode.
The forum has received good reviews worldwide for its activities. For example, Chair Ken Sakamura was honored with an ITU150 Award (※) in May 2015 by proposing TRON open architecture, the origin of ubiquitous networking and the IoT. He was the only winner in Asia among the six winners that included Bill Gates. New working groups (WGs) for the IoT technology standardization and open data technology have been established, and new member categories to participate in the new WGs have been created in October 2015.
（※）On the occasion of the 150th Anniversary of ITU (International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations specialized agency for ICTs, HQ: Geneva, Switzerland), ITU150 Awards were launched to recognize individuals past and present from government, ICT industry, academia, and civil society that have contributed to improving lives of world citizens through ICT innovations developed, promoted or implemented by ITU. (http://www.itu.int/en/150/Pages/awards.aspx)
Member Benefits
Member categories
TRON Forum offers the member categories shown in Table 1: Executive Committee, A-, i-, B-, e-, O-, Academic, Supporting and Liaison.
- Those who want to participate in the Executive Committee which decides the operation policies of the forum should join as Executive Committee members.
- Companies which would like to conduct standardization activities through discussions in WGs should join as Executive Committee or A-members.
- Companies in the IoT-related business should participate in the forum as Executive Committee/A-/i-members. Companies in the open data-related business should participate in the forum as Executive Committee/A-/O-members.
- Companies in the embedded systems industry in need of receiving the outputs of the forum’s activities early should participate in the forum as B-members.
- e-member category should meet the needs of those involved in the promotion of ubiquitous computing.
- Those in academic activities can participate in the forum as Academic members without membership fee. They may also participate as i- and/or O-members at their request.
The forum members can access software and related documents, etc. prior to the eventual release to the public, and access members-only documents.
Table 1 Member categories and activities of TRON Forum
The IoT (Internet of Things)
TRON Project was the world’s first to conduct the research and development (R&D) and technology standardization activities of ubiquitous computing and embedded systems, the important technologies to support the IoT. The project has been doing it since 1984, more than 30 years ago. The project has produced fruitful results such as ITRON specification OS and T-Kernel which are real-time OS kernels, ubiquitous ID architecture which is the application platform of ubiquitous computing, and a de-facto standard ucode which is an ID system for ubiquitous computing.
In recent years, these results of the technology development have been distributed to the world, and have been used widely in the fields called with the keywords such as the IoT (Internet of Things), M2M (Machine-to-Machine) and CPS (Cyber-Physical System). TRON Forum has established IoT WG (IoT WG Chair: Ken Sakamura, professor of the University of Tokyo) to deploy the research results even further. Also, i-member category has been created for corporations which promote the IoT actively. We look forward to your participation.
Open data
Open data is data version of public infrastructure: API to access highly public data, etc. is published, and such data is made available via network. TRON Forum has established Open Data WG (ODWG, Chair: Ken Sakamura, professor of the University of Tokyo) to promote open data.
Open data handles various types of information such as statistical data and document information including white papers. TRON Forum conducts the R&D on the technology to publish real-time data obtained by the IoT technology and sensors as open data and the standardization of such technology. Using such standard technologies, the forum shall build leading-edge next generation open data services, conduct the R&D on standard service platforms and propose policies. O-member category has been newly created for the members of ODWG to promote the R&D on open data technology and its standardization activity by the forum. This member category is for those who actively promote open data.
Embedded systems
TRON Forum B-member category should meet the needs of manufacturers of embedded products, providers of developer tools, OSs and middleware, and those who conduct business in the embedded systems ecosphere such as semiconductor vendors, etc. There are “Members only material,” “Members only software,” etc. such as T-Kernel 2.0 AeroSpace and T-Kernel Test Suite released only to the members involved in embedded systems.
Ubiquitous computing
If you are interested in ubiquitous ID architecture that uses ucode, which is an ID system to allocate unique ID to objects, places and concepts across the boundaries of companies and industrial sectors, please participate in the forum as e-member. e-members can receive allocation of 48-bit (281 trillion) ucode space without additional fees.
WG activities
There are Working Groups (WGs) in TRON Forum as below. Executive Committee members and A-members can participate in all the WGs. (i-members and O-members can participate in related WGs.) We look forward to your active participation in the forum’s standardization activities.
- IoT WG: Studies and proposes Open API (Open Device API) that is used via network which enables collaboration between devices and between devices and servers.
- Open Data WG: Studies and proposes various technologies related to open data.
- Academic and Education WG: Acts as instructors of seminars and reviews the content of seminars.
- Research and Study WG: Conducts surveys and reports on the usage trends of real-time OS (RTOS).
- T-Kernel 2.0 WG: Reviews T-Kernel 2.0 and middleware.
- TRON Safe Kernel WG: Creates a specification of RTOS that supports “functional safety”.
- ITRON WG: Maintains ITRON specification.
TRON Forum Annual Fee and Validity Period of Membership
TRON Forum’s activities are held on an annual basis from April 1 to March 31. Irrespective of the timing of participation, the membership is valid only for the applicable year. Only a legally incorporated organization can join in TRON Forum. The annual fee for each member category is as follows;
- Executive Committee members: A-members that pay 3,000,000 yen or more
- A-members: one share 1,000,000 yen/year (please pay one or more shares)
- i-members: one share 300,000 yen/year (please pay one or more shares)
- B-members: one share 100,000 yen/year (please pay one or more shares)
- e-members: one share 100,000 yen/year (please pay one or more shares)
- O-members: one share 100,000 yen/year (please pay one or more shares)
- Academic members: Free/year
- Liaison members: Free/year
- Supporting members: Please contact us.
i- and O-members will start activities in the second half of FY2015. Therefore, for FY2015 only, the annual i-membership dues shall be 150,000 yen per share, and the annual O-membership dues shall be 50,000 yen per share.
TRON Forum Training Seminars
TRON Forum holds various seminars, lectures and lectures with hands-on practice regarding embedded systems, ubiquitous computing, the IoT and open data. The forum members can participate in these seminars for free although there is a limit on the number of participants who can attend for free depending on the member categories. If you are interested in participating in the seminars, please check the up-to-date seminar information on the forum website. – The seminars will be held only in Japanese.
Admission procedure
If you would like to join TRON Forum, please fill out the membership application form, and fax or e-mail it as attachment, or send e-mail with the same content as the application form to the TRON Forum Secretariat.
- TRON Forum Membership Application Form (PDF format)
- TRON Forum Admission Guide (PDF format)
Inquiries
TRON Forum Secretariat
In YRP Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory,
The 28th Kowa Building, 2-20-1, Nishi-Gotanda, Shinagawa, Tokyo 141-0031, Japan
TEL: +81-3-5437-0572
FAX: +81-3-5437-2399
E-mail: office@tron.org
http://www.tron.org/