News

PRESS RELEASE: Acceleration Robotics expands to India and takes over TechnoYantra to grow in Asia

Source: Acceleration Robotics, November 3, 2022 [1]
The company offers semiconductor building blocks for robots and consulting services specialized in the Robot Operating System (ROS). Will grow its business in the semiconductors and autonomous mobility fields through hardware acceleration.

An open architecture for hardware acceleration in robotics and ROS 2 - ROSCon 2022

Source: Acceleration Robotics, October 31, 2022 [2]
Hardware acceleration can revolutionize robotics enabling faster and more power-efficient robots. However, the diversity of acceleration options makes it difficult for roboticists to easily deploy accelerated systems without expertise in each specific hardware platform, specially when mixing with ROS 2. In our recent talk at ROSCon 2022, we presented the architectural pillars and conventions required to introduce hardware acceleration in ROS 2 in a scalable and technology-agnostic manner: the ROBOTCORE Framework (paper). This article summarizes our speech and experience.

Chinese firms may be allowed in high-tech electronics in JV with Indian companies

Source: The Economic Times, November 2, 2022 [3]
The government is open to allowing Chinese firms' entry into the high-tech electronics sector if they set up manufacturing units in the country. The government is trying to identify Indian companies which may want to get into electronics joint ventures with those from South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Qualcomm: Arm threatens to end CPU licensing, charge device makers instead

Source: The Register, November 1, 2022 [4]
Arm's business model is primarily licensing chip blueprints – such as CPU cores and GPU engines – to companies including Qualcomm. Arm charges a fee for providing the initial blueprints, and then a royalty on each shipped chip. These chips can be sold on to device makers, or can feature in the chip designers' own products.

Samsung foresees demand increase in ’23 for chips

Source: Fierce Electronics, October 22, 2022 [5]
Samsung Electronics reported record revenues of 76.8 trillion won ($54.2 billion), up 4% from a year earlier, but profits dived 31%. Uncertainty over global geopolitics will likely hurt demand for its products until early 2023, the company said.

Intel extension for TensorFlow released - provides Intel GPU acceleration

Source: Phoronix, October 28, 2022 [6]
Intel has published the Intel Extension for TensorFlow that makes use of TF's PluggableDevice mechanism to provide an Intel GPU back-end. The extension works with the Data Center GPU Flex Series as well as Arc Graphics discrete GPUs. It complements the NVIDIA CUDA and AMD HIP support.

Fast processors advance 3D inspection

Source: Imaging and Machine Vision Europe, October 31, 2022 [7]
A number of high-speed 3D smart cameras were being shown at the Vision trade fair in Stuttgart. They include Teledyne Dalsa's Z-Trak2 5GigE 3D profile sensor for in-line applications. Elsewhere, Nerian Vision was showing stereo vision cameras incorporating an FPGA.

With its new RISC-V processors, SiFive bets on compute density

Source: allaboutcircuits, November 2, 2022 [8]
Aiming to usurp Arm processors in size-constrained, compute hungry designs like wearables, SiFive has expanded its RISC-V “Performance” line of processors.

Justin Kennington on AV supply chain using FPGA vs. ASIC chips

Source: systemscontractor, October 31, 2022 [9]
SDVoE Alliance President, Justin Kennington shares his perspective on how FPGA versus ASIC chips impacts the product supply chain in the AV industry.

On-chip laser pushes photonics milestones in LiDAR, AR/VR, and beyond

Source: allaboutcircuits, November 1, 2022 [10]
Shrinking a room-sized laser to the scale of a fingernail, the researchers believe their on-chip laser will “reshape the landscape of integrated photonics.”

Orchestrating accelerated virtual machines with Kubernetes using NVIDIA GPU operator

Source: NVIDIA Technical Blog, October 28, 2022 [11]
KubeVirt and OpenShift Virtualization are add-ons to Kubernetes that provide virtual machine (VM) management. They eliminate the need to manage separate clusters for VM and container workloads. NVIDIA has also created technology to support GPU acceleration for containers.

Papers

HyperDog: An open-source quadruped robot platform based on ROS2 and micro-ROS

Source: arXiv, September 19, 2022 [12]
HyperDog is an open-source platform for quadruped robotic software development, which is based on Robot Operating System 2 (ROS2) and micro-ROS. HyperDog is a quadrupedal robotic dog entirely built from 3D printed parts and carbon fiber.

Portable multi-hypothesis Monte Carlo Localization for mobile robots

Source: arXiv, September 15, 2022 [13]
Self-localization is the ability to move from one place to another using a map, and it is crucial for robots to perform delicate dexterity tasks. This paper describes a new method that maintains several locations using Monte Carlo Localization (MCL) algorithms. It also contributes the state of the art implementations, enhancing recovery times from unknown initial positions.

Computer vision in surgery: from potential to clinical value

Source: Nature, October 28, 2022 [14]
Computer vision (CV) has become a critical technology through which to study the intraoperative phase of care. There are currently no CV tools widely used for diagnostic or therapeutic applications in surgery. We review current CV techniques that have been applied to minimally invasive surgery and their clinical applications.

Previous Hardware Acceleration in Robotics Newsletters

Past ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group meetings

  1. https://news.accelerationrobotics.com/acceleration-robotics-expands-to-india-and-takes-over-technoyantra-to-grow-in-asia/ ↩︎

  2. https://news.accelerationrobotics.com/an-open-architecture-for-hardware-acceleration-in-ros-2/ ↩︎

  3. Rathee, K. (2022, November 2). Chinese firms may be allowed in high-tech electronics in JV with Indian companies. The Economic Times. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/chinese-firms-may-be-allowed-in-high-tech-electronics-in-jv-with-indian-companies/articleshow/95240348.cms?from=mdr ↩︎

  4. Martin, D. (2022, November 1). Qualcomm claims arm is threatening to tear up CPU licensing. The Register: Enterprise Technology News and Analysis. https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/01/qualcomm_arm_cpu/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=article ↩︎

  5. Hamblen, M. (2022, October 27). Samsung foresees demand increase in ’23 for chips. Fierce Electronics. https://www.fierceelectronics.com/electronics/samsung-foresees-demand-increase-23-chips ↩︎

  6. Larabel, M. (2022, October 28). Intel extension for TensorFlow released - Provides Intel GPU acceleration. Linux Hardware Reviews & Performance Benchmarks, Open-Source News - Phoronix. https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Extension-For-TensorFlow ↩︎

  7. Fast processors advance 3D inspection. (2022, October 31). Imaging and Machine Vision Europe | Europe's only dedicated magazine for design and production engineers working in the scientific imaging and machine vision market. https://www.imveurope.com/feature/fast-processors-advance-3d-inspection ↩︎

  8. Child, J. (2022, November 2). With its new RISC-V processors, SiFive bets on compute density. allaboutcircuits. https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/with-its-new-risc-v-processors-sifive-bets-on-compute-density/ ↩︎

  9. Kennington, J. (2022, October 31). Justin Kennington on AV supply chain using FPGA vs. ASIC chips. systemscontractor. https://www.avnetwork.com/news/justin-kennington-on-supply-chain-using-fpga-vs-asic-chips ↩︎

  10. Hertz, J. (2022, November 1). On-chip laser pushes photonics milestones in LiDAR, AR/VR, and beyond. allaboutcircuits. https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/on-chip-laser-pushes-photonics-milestones-lidar-ar-vr-beyond/ ↩︎

  11. Chaubal, C. (2022, October 28). Orchestrating accelerated virtual machines with Kubernetes using NVIDIA GPU operator. NVIDIA Technical Blog. https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/orchestrating-accelerated-virtual-machines-with-kubernetes-using-nvidia-gpu-operator/ ↩︎

  12. Weerakkodi, N. P., Zhura, I., Babataev, I., Nazarova, E., Fedoseev, A., & Tsetserukou, D. (2022, September 19). HyperDog: An open-source quadruped robot platform based on ROS2 and micro-ROS. arXiv . https://arxiv.org/pdf/2209.09171.pdf ↩︎

  13. García, A., Martín, F., Guerrero, J. M., Rodríguez, F. J., & Matellán, V. (2022, September 15). Portable multi-hypothesis monte carlo localization for mobile robots. arXiv.org e-Print archive. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2209.07586.pdf ↩︎

  14. Mascagni, P., Alapatt, D., Sestini, L., Altieri, M. S., Madani, A., Watanabe, Y., Alseidi, A., Redan, J. A., Alfieri, S., Costamagna, G., Boskoski, I., Pradoy, N., & Hashimoto, D. A. (2022, October 28). Computer vision in surgery: From potential to clinical value. Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-022-00707-5 ↩︎