Low code tool for industrial, mobility interfaces

The Qt Group in Finland has launched a low code development tool for industrial and mobility interface applications.

Qt Accelerate is built on the Qt Framework to provide ready-to-deploy, industrial-grade templates for software-defined products whose look, feel, and functionality can be easily customized. This is intended to give organizations of all sizes a quick and cost-effective start on digital product development, regardless of time constraints or expertise in coding, hardware, and design. 

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The development platform has packages of pre-designed, quality-assured, and industry-tailored software templates where the user interface components can be customised to suit branding needs and instantly deploy across a wide range of supported entry-level and premium hardware with little to no custom code. 

This is aimed at organizations needing to quickly develop proof-of-concepts or products for faster time-to-market. Products can even be tested in the cloud without hardware.   

 “Qt Accelerate is about empowering creators to turn ideas into innovative products in days, no matter the time or resource constraints,” said Petteri Holländer, Senior Vice President, Ventures, Qt Group. 

“Sometimes you need a quick start, whether you’re a large enterprise or a startup, since building a software-defined product from scratch can be an involved process. It takes coding, designing, deciding which software and hardware to use, etc. With Qt Accelerate, you don’t have to start from scratch or hire a full engineering team before you have a working product to trial. You get a starting point that’s 90 percent complete and risk-free because it’s quality-assured from the ground up. After just one week of customization, you are easily looking at a version 1.0 product launch.” 

Qt Accelerate also supports extensions for companion apps, real-time analytics, over-the-air updates, and more. The templates are developed with quality assurance in mind and with consideration for the requirements of the Cyber Resilience Act, enabling Qt Accelerate and its customers to work towards building compliant and reliable devices.

The tool has already been trialed by various mobility customers, such as delivery robot developer Clean Motion and electric hydrofoil manufacturer Foilone but Qt Accelerate is designed to support many industrial and consumer electronics use cases, with more to be supported in the future.  

“We built our first HMI for our EV with an off-the-shelf platform offering basic functionality but soon realized we had no control over UX, layout, or design. We wanted a clean Nordic design, but we needed to move the project forward quickly,” says William Collings, CTO, Clean Motion. 

“Qt Accelerate made it possible to create a stylish and functional HMI within our system. We set up a one-week boot camp with Qt to create our HMI based on Qt Accelerate’s templates. Within a week, we hadn’t just designed the UI/UX but already had a stable system deployed and integrated within our vehicle.”

The templates and base functionality in Qt Accelerate allow us to quickly tweak and iterate. It’s a ready-made backbone that can be customized to match our needs.” says Mathias Heinonen, CEO, Foilone. “We don’t have any user interface experience in-house, so having a partner who could bring us a ready plan, take our feedback, and implement it so seamlessly without compromising was incredibly valuable.”

Qt Accelerate will be shown at CES 2025 in Las Vegas this week.