Arrowhead 5.0: Industrial Automation and Interoperability

The industrial automation landscape continues to evolve rapidly, driven by the growing complexity of distributed systems, IoT, and the increasing demand for interoperability across domains. With this in mind, the Eclipse Arrowhead framework is preparing for a significant leap forward with its upcoming Arrowhead 5.0 release.

In a recent in-depth presentation, Tamás Bordi of AITIA International Inc. showcased the major new features and architectural advancements coming in version 5.0. Scheduled for release on July 31st, 2025, Arrowhead 5.0 brings new levels of flexibility, security, and ease of integration.

What’s New in Arrowhead 5.0?

The upcoming release introduces several groundbreaking capabilities that address the key needs of modern industrial ecosystems.

🔧 1. Flexible Deployment with Individual and Cooperative Modes

In many industrial scenarios, one size does not fit all. Arrowhead 5.0 allows users to choose between:

• Individual Working Mode: Core systems operate independently, giving more autonomy and responsibility to application systems.
• Cooperative Working Mode: Core systems cooperate, handling orchestration, authentication, and authorization centrally, allowing application systems to focus on their core microservices.

This flexibility enables solution architects to tailor deployments according to system complexity, security needs, and integration requirements.

🔐 2. Enhanced Authentication and Authorization

Security has always been a core focus of the Arrowhead framework. In version 5.0, authentication and authorization processes have been redesigned to be more robust, scalable, and flexible:

• Multiple Authentication Policies:
  • Declared Authentication (for testing)
  • Certificate-based Authentication (improved certificate profiles)
  • Outsourced Authentication using dedicated identity services
• Policy-Based Authorization Rules:
  Moving beyond peer-to-peer authorization, Arrowhead 5.0 allows:
  • Whitelist / blacklist definitions
  • Group-based authorization using metadata
  • Dynamic rule creation by providers
• New Authorization Tokens:
  • Time-limited tokens
  • Usage-limited tokens
  • Self-contained tokens (Base64 and JWT)

These mechanisms offer fine-grained access control for complex environments, ensuring both security and operational flexibility.

🔄 3. Translation Support for Seamless Interoperability

One of the standout innovations in Arrowhead 5.0 is its advanced translation support. The framework now enables:

• Protocol Translation: Allowing communication between heterogeneous systems.
• Payload Translation: Mapping data between different formats.
• Data Model Translation: Bridging semantic differences in data representations.

This capability greatly simplifies integration efforts across diverse systems and industries, a critical feature in multi-vendor environments.

📈 4. Clear Migration Path from Version 4

Recognizing the significant architectural changes introduced, the development team is preparing comprehensive migration guidelines to assist existing users in upgrading from Arrowhead 4.x to 5.0 smoothly.

Early Access: Test Builds Available

Though the official release is planned for the end of July, the development team has already made test builds available to the community. Users are encouraged to download, test, and provide feedback to help fine-tune the final release.

🎥 You can watch the full detailed presentation by Tamás Bordi here:
➡️ Arrowhead 5.0 Development Status & Feature Highlight

The development of Arrowhead 5.0 is part of ArrowheadfPVN Project and AiMS5.0 and is funded by the Chips Joint Undertaking (Chips JU). The project is supported by a strong European consortium with additional national contributions from Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Italy, Romania, Portugal, Hungary, and France.

This strong collaborative foundation ensures that Arrowhead 5.0 will not only serve today’s needs but will continue to evolve as a robust open-source framework supporting Industry 4.0 and beyond.