Industrial Controls Expert Witnesses

Robotics and Factory Automation

Barr Group's industrial controls expert witnesses are highly qualified software engineers, electrical engineers, and mechanical engineers who are experienced in the design of robotics and factory automation equipment for a range of industries from food and pharmaceuticals production to fossil fuel and solar energy generation and distribution to automobile and electronics assembly lines. As professional designers of reliable and secure embedded systems, Barr Group is knowledgeable in IEC 61508 and other functional safety standards that apply to industrial controls and automation systems as well as the following technologies:

• Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems
• Programmable Logic Controls (PLCs) a/k/a "ladder logic"
• Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)
• Open Smart Grid Protocol (OGSP) and ISO/IEC 14908
• IEC 61158 "Fieldbus" networks for real-time distributed control
• DeviceNet and CANopen interoperability network software
• Environmental monitoring and remote sensing technologies
• Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS) per IEC 61511 (ISA 84)
• Machine Vision (MV) for automated process and quality control
• Computer Numeric Control (CNC) and 3-D printing
• ANSI/RIA R15.06 and other robotics safety considerations
• Electrical interlocks, failsafes, and machine guarding

Barr Group's expert witnesses are familiar with all of the operating systems used in industrial controls, including real-time operating systems like VxWorks and QNX as well as Linux and Windows, and also the languages used to program these systems such as assembly, C/C++, and Labview. And we are just as comfortable with electronic circuit and mechanical design.

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Expert Witness Services

Barr Group's industrial controls experts support plaintiffs and defendants in litigation in U.S. District Courts, at the International Trade Commission (ITC), and before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). Our services include:

• Technical assistance with drafting of discovery requests
• Software source code review and analysis
• Source code comparisons for copyright and trade secret theft
• Analysis of electronics and related design documents
• Review of mechanical designs and safety interlocks
• Comparison to IEC 61508 and other functional safety standards
• Prior art review for patent invalidity
• Reverse engineering, including disassembly of binary code
• Forensic analysis and malfunction reconstruction
• Expert reports, declarations, and witness statements
• Testimony at deposition, oral hearings, and trials

Barr Group has a demonstrated ability to quickly activate one or more code reviewers to match the size, scope, and complexity of any project. And our team includes licensed Professional Engineers (P.E.s).

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Further Reading

• Embedded Control Systems in Practice
• Cybersecurity and Embedded Systems

The following is a representative subset of Barr Group's experts who have experience designing and/or testifying about these technologies:

Who are Barr Group's Industrial Controls expert witnesses?

Barr Group's Industrial Controls expert witness roster holds 79 anonymized, prequalified profiles; a selection follows, and matched recommendations from the full roster are free to the attorney.

• Embedded Software Design Expert Witness. Barr Group's embedded software expert witness has more than twenty-five years of software industry experience and has testified more than twenty times before judges and juries in U.S. and Canadian courts.
• Electronic Casino Games Expert Witness. Barr Group's electronic gaming device expert witness has over thirty years of experience in regulatory-compliance testing and evaluation of electronic devices and has been qualified to testify as an expert witness in a variety of venues.
• Electronic Vehicle Controls Expert Witness. Barr Group's automotive electronic subsystems expert witness has over forty years of industry experience in vehicle electrical and electronic architectures, power generation and distribution, smart and analog sensors, driver assistance and safety features, and mild hybrid dual voltage bus systems.
• Penetration Testing Security Expert Witness. Barr Group's embedded security expert witness specializes in penetration testing, reverse engineering with tools such as IDA Pro, FPGA design in VHDL, and real-time firmware in C and assembly, and holds a security clearance.
• Battery Chemistry Expert Witness. Barr Group's battery and energy storage expert witness has more than thirty years of experience in battery, materials, and control system technology and has analyzed catastrophic battery system failures to determine root causes and cascading failure modes.
• Manufacturing Automated Test Expert Witness. Barr Group's electrical engineering expert witness has several decades of experience designing software and electronics for servo systems, data detectors, signal processors, and test equipment for magnetic and optical storage media and PC, EISA, and VME bus peripherals.
• Industrial PLC and SCADA System Expert Witness. Barr Group's electrical system design expert witness is a registered professional engineer and licensed electrical contractor with more than forty years of experience in project management, cost estimation, field construction, UL508A and UL698A industrial control panels, and NEC and CEC compliance.
• GPS & Navigation Systems Expert Witness. Barr Group's GNSS and location-based services expert witness has twenty-five years of navigation technology experience spanning global positioning systems, geolocation and tracking, mobile and IoT devices, and cloud-based services across the consumer electronics and automotive industries.
• Embedded Firmware Architecture Expert Witness. Barr Group's embedded firmware architecture expert witness has over 30 years of experience with real-time operating systems and hardware-software interfacing for safety-critical automotive and medical devices, with litigation experience in automotive product liability and patent disputes.
• Power Electronics and Motor Drive Expert Witness. Barr Group's power electronics expert witness has over two decades of experience designing switch-mode power supplies, wide-bandgap semiconductor converters, and permanent magnet synchronous motors for aerospace and defense propulsion applications.