Building Kiteshield:
A journey from prototype to safety-critical

By Emil Fresk

Talk - Thursday, 18 September
15:45

At Kiteshield, we’re building a Rust-based safety system for underground mining, designed to prevent collisions between manual and autonomous machines. The system will eventually need to meet strict safety requirements, including components certified up to SIL 3 under IEC 61508.

Right now, we’re in the middle of prototyping, and are focused on proving performance and reliability in real-world conditions. In parallel, we’re preparing to shift into safety-critical development by early next year. That includes selecting the right tooling and helping a team without prior safety experience build the mindset and capabilities needed for high-assurance work.

This talk is a snapshot of that transition, where rapid development meets early safety planning. It marks the start of a longer journey, and we hope to return in future years to share how the system, the team, and the tooling evolve as we move toward certification.

Speaker

Emil Fresk

Emil Fresk is a Technical Manager at Kiteshield, where he leads the development of a Rust-based safety system for underground mining. He holds a PhD in Control Theory and has over 15 years of experience in embedded systems and high-speed hardware design. He is also the maintainer of the RTIC real-time operating system for embedded Rust. While new to safety-critical development, he is focused on building the mindset, tools, and processes needed to meet strict certification goals. Emil is passionate about building robust systems with clean, maintainable tooling, and about helping teams grow into high-assurance development without sacrificing clarity or momentum. He believes that safety and developer experience can work together, and that Rust provides a strong foundation for both.