Patrick White
Vice President of Strategic Marketing for General Dynamics Itronix

Displays are obviously a big part of that. All of our displays have touchscreen capability, with a touch panel that sits on top of the glass panel itself. Especially if you are using just one or two applications, you’re constantly hitting one area of the panel because that is where the button is that says “enter” or “go to” or “connect my radio now”. You can understand how that could deteriorate if you weren’t using an industrial strength touch panel or display.

Keyboards are another point of failure due to constant use so designing industrial strength, rubberized keyboards rather than loose keys is a way to combat failure. They also prevent foreign object debris or FOD, one of the main requirements for computers used on Air Force flight lines.

Other than that, the I/O ports are critical in a fully-rugged platform. We do far more than just place rubber doors and seals on the outside of the ports. With our fully rugged GD8000 computer, for example, we’ve designed it rugged from the inside out using special materials and gaskets on the inside of the device. This way a user need only replace a wet port rather than having to replace a ruined system board.