News

ABB: 62% of US businesses looking to invest in robotics

Source: The Robot Report, July 8, 2022 [1]
Robot sales hit a record high in the first quarter of 2022. Sales increased 28% from Q1 of 2021, to 11,595 units sold in 2022. 43% of businesses surveyed said that they were planning to invest more in robotics and automation. The survey polled 1,610 executives in the U.S. and Europe.

Sony making sensors for autonomous vehicles

Source: The Robot Report, July 19, 2022 [2]
Sony is developing a sensor for self-driving vehicles that uses 70% less electricity. Sensor will be made by Sony Semiconductor Solution and will be paired with software developed by Tier IV. Sony has already commercialized edge computing technology in chips for retailers and industrial equipment.

Arm’s new CPU and GPU cores usher a new generation of total compute solutions

Source: Forbes, July 14, 2022 [3]
ARM pre-briefs the press and analysts about its latest innovations in the client computing space. Mobile gaming is heavily influencing Arm's vision of mobile computing. The company talked at length about performance from the perspective of gaming, which generally translates to performance improvements for many other experiences as well.

Reverse-engineering insect brains to make robots

Source: eetimes, July 19, 2022 [4]
Opteran has reverse–engineered insect brains to derive new algorithms for collision avoidance and navigation. Opteran's natural intelligence requires no training data, and no training, more like how a biological brain works. The company is a spin–out of the University of Sheffield.

Imagination’s first real-time embedded RISC-V CPU

Source: Electronics Weekly, July 15, 2022 [5]
Imagination Technologies has announced its first real-time embedded RISC-V CPU. Called IMG RTXM-2200, the 32bit core is aimed at SoCs for networking, packet management, storage controllers, sensor management for AI cameras and smart metering, according to the company.

Chip democratisation leads to open-source choices

Source: E&T Magazine, July 19, 2022 [6]
Despite mask and software costs accelerating. some observers believe wider access to custom chips is coming. Growing number of design teams can justify the switch from software or FPGA to ASIC or SoC. RISC-V now offers a wide range of options, whether free and open-source or commercial paid-for.

Microsoft's metaverse is for training autonomous drones

Source: The Register, July 19, 2022 [7]
The software can simulate millions of drone flights in real-world scenarios. Pre-trained models can be used to build more customized digital drone pilots for use in the industrial metaverse.

Retbleed Hack: the hardware vulnerability preying on Intel and AMD CPUs

Source: allaboutcircuits, July 19, 2022 [8]
Researchers from ETH Zürich have discovered that some of the most popular processors on the market may have a backdoor to information theft.

Sensing breakdown: Waymo Jaguar I-Pace robotaxi

Source: Tangram Vision Platform, July 19, 2022 [9]
Waymo has quietly rolled out their own driverless robotaxis in San Francisco. At this year's TechCrunch Sessions, we had the chance to inspect a stationary Waymo I-Pace in detail. Discovered hidden sensors and what we believe to be a dual use approach to sensor arrays.

Optimizing and serving models with NVIDIA TensorRT and NVIDIA Triton

Source: NVIDIA Technical Blog, July 20, 2022 [10]
You can squeeze better performance out of a model by accelerating it across three levels. NVIDIA GPUs are the leading choice for hardware acceleration among deep learning practitioners. Algorithmic or network acceleration revolves around the use of techniques like quantization and knowledge distillation that make modifications to the network itself.

Papers

Analysis of the impact on soft error in AXI CDMA based on Xilinx Zynq-7000 FPGA

Source: sciencedirect, June 2, 2022 [11]
The paper discusses the impact of single-event effects (SEEs) induced by radiation in an advanced extensible interface (AXI) central direct memory access (CDMA) core based on 28 nm Xilinx ZYNQ-7000 FPGA.Soft errors of CDMA have been tested with an 241Am source using data transmitting between the block random-access memory (BRAM) and external memory (DDR3). Soft errors of CDMA have been tested with an 241Am source using data transmitting between the block random-access memory (BRAM) and external memory (DDR3).

Software architecture for mobile robots

Source: arXiv.org, June 7, 2022 [12]
Software architecture is the process of ensuring that the structure or the design of a system is according to specifics needs. For mobile robotics, specific requirements are, for example, real-time capabilities, asynchronous data processing and distributed functionality. Therefore, it is prudent to take into account not only the design, but also the suitability of the implementation as well.

Design and motion planning for a reconfigurable robotic base

Source: arXiv.org , June 30, 2022 [13]
A robotic platform for mobile manipulation needs to be compact and support large enough to prevent tipping over. This paper proposes a novel robot design that can reconfigure its footprint to navigate through tight spaces and take advantage of its triangular configuration on uneven ground by preventing support-switches.

Previous Hardware Acceleration in Robotics Newsletters

Past ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group meetings

  1. Wessling, B. (2022, July 8). ABB: 62% of US businesses looking to invest in robotics. The Robot Report. https://www.therobotreport.com/abb-62-of-us-businesses-looking-to-invest-in-robotics/ ↩︎

  2. Wessling, B. (2022, July 19). Sony making sensors for autonomous vehicles. The Robot Report. https://www.therobotreport.com/sony-making-sensors-for-autonomous-vehicles/?spMailingID=72239&puid=2502618&E=2502618&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=72239 ↩︎

  3. Sag, A. (2022, July 14). Arm’s new CPU And GPU cores usher a new generation of total compute solutions. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2022/07/14/arms-new-cpu-and-gpu-cores-usher-a-new-generation-of-total-compute-solutions/?sh=7a30baa32416 ↩︎

  4. Foxton, S. W. (2022, July 19). Reverse-engineering insect brains to make robots. eetimes. https://www.eetimes.com/reverse-engineering-insect-brains-to-make-robots/ ↩︎

  5. Bush, S. (2022, July 15). Updated: Imagination's first real-time embedded RISC-V CPU. Electronics Weekly. https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/design/eda-and-ip/imaginations-first-real-time-embedded-risc-v-cpu-2022-07/ ↩︎

  6. Edwards, C. (2022, July 19). Chip democratisation leads to open-source choices. E&T Magazine. https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2022/07/chip-democratisation-leads-to-open-source-choices/ ↩︎

  7. Vigliarolo, B. (2022, July 19). Microsoft uses metaverse to train autonomous drones. The Register: Enterprise Technology News and Analysis. https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/19/microsofts_metaverse_is_for_training/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=article ↩︎

  8. Hertz, J. (2022, July 19). Retbleed Hack: the hardware vulnerability preying on Intel and AMD CPUs. allaboutcircuits. https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/retbleed-hack-hardware-vulnerability-preying-on-intel-amd-cpus/ ↩︎

  9. Rodnitzky, A. (2022, July 17). Sensing breakdown: Waymo jaguar I-pace RoboTaxi. Tangram Vision Platform: The Modern Perception Platform. https://www.tangramvision.com/blog/sensing-breakdown-waymo-jaguar-i-pace-robotaxi ↩︎

  10. Varshney, T., Rodge, J., & Comly, N. (2022, July 20). Optimizing and serving models with NVIDIA TensorRT and NVIDIA Triton. NVIDIA Technical Blog. https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/optimizing-and-serving-models-with-nvidia-tensorrt-and-nvidia-triton/ ↩︎

  11. Xiong, X., Du, X., Zheng, B., He, S., Li, Y., Yang, W., & Feng, S. (2022, June 2). Analysis of the impact on soft error in AXI CDMA based on Xilinx Zynq-7000 FPGA. sciencedirect. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168900222003679 ↩︎

  12. Andreasson, H., Grisetti, G., Stoyanov, T., & Pretto, A. (2022, June 7). Software architecture for mobile robots. arXiv.org. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.03233.pdf ↩︎

  13. Pankert, J., Valscchi, G., Abret, D., Zehnder, J., Pietrasik, L. L., Bjelonic, M., & Hunter, M. (2022, June 30). Design and motion planning for a reconfigurable robotic base. arXiv.org . https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.15298.pdf ↩︎