ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group

ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group - meeting #13

Source: ROS Discourse, December 13, 2022 [1]
We discussed Updates on the Robotic Processing Unit and Robotics MCU projects and discussion around standardization efforts. Particularly REP-2008, REP-2014 and and RobotPerf. The session also includes a guest talk provided by Piotr Rybicki and Adam Dabrowski from Robotec.ai telling us about their recent work around the RobotecGPULidar, a cross-platform (Windows and Linux), C/C++ library for simulating LiDARs on CUDA-enabled GPUs, accelerated by RTX cores if available.

News

Intrinsic acquires OSRC and OSRC-SG

Source: Open Robotics, December 14, 2022
Intrinsic has acquired the Open Source Robotics Corporation (OSRC). In this post, Brian Gerkey looks at the structural side of the acquisition and why he's excited about it. There is no change in OSRF's core mission or day-to-day operations.

Mobile robot shipments increased by 53% in 2022

Source: The Robot Report, December 13, 2022 [2]
The mobile robot market saw a 53% increase in mobile robot shipments in 2022. By 2027, Interact Analysis expects an installed base of over 4 million mobile robots. Material transport AGVs and AMRs will make up almost a quarter of the total by 2027.

Making sure AMD has the complete tech package

Source: The Next Platform, December 12, 2022 [3]
The chief technology officers in the tech world have done their time in the engineering trenches, writing their papers, getting their patents, and helping suppliers up and down the IT supply chain make the money that keeps the innovation flowing. But someone always needs to focus the imagination and enthusiasm of system architects, chip designers, and software engineers and design devices that solve real-world, actual customer problems.

Researchers develop AV object detection system with 96% accuracy

Source: The Robot Report, December 13, 2022 [4]
An international research team at Incheon National University in South Korea has created an Internet-of-Things enabled, real-time object detection system. System is based on deep learning specialized for autonomous driving situations. Researchers used end-to-end neural network to detect objects with high accuracy in 2D and 3D.

How robotics can help manufacturers solve labor shortages

Source: Robotics & Automation News, December 8, 2022 [5]
Manufacturing is critical to the United States and the Midwest. It’s responsible for creating jobs, supporting businesses, and generating economic growth. Manufacturing is also a key driver of innovation, helping to create new products and technologies that can improve our lives.

TSMC founder says 'globalization is almost dead' as Asian foundry giant expands in US

Source: The Register, December 8, 2022 [6]
Morris Chang reportedly made the comments at Tuesday's ceremony for TSMC's advanced chip manufacturing site in Arizona. TSMC is expanding in the US for the first time in over 20 years. The company plans to spend roughly $40 billion to open a 4nm fab in 2024 and a more sophisticated 3nm plant in 2026.

As semiconductor VC funding dips, startups trip, crash, build for the next boom

Source: The Register, December 10, 2022 [7]
Funding for semiconductor startups in 2022 reached $7.8 billion, as of December 5. That's a 46 percent decline from the record $14.5 billion investors pumped into silicon firms last year. The number of worldwide semiconductor funding deals fell this year to 618.

Where automotive FPGAs stand in smart car designs

Source: EDN, December 14, 2022 [8]
The most advanced cars can have up to 10-12 FPGAs inside them, all performing varying functions. These include infotainment systems, advanced driver assistance systems and in-cabin artificial intelligence. Deloitte projects 45% of the cost of a new car will come from electronic systems by 2030.

Microchip showcases RISC-V-Based FPGA and space-compute solutions at RISC-V summit

Source: EEJournal, December 9, 2022 [9]
Microchip will be showing its solutions at the 2022 RISC-V Summit. PolarFire 2 FPGA and PolarFire SoC families already deliver the industry's best thermal and power efficiency. Microchip was the first to offer FPGAs for power-efficient edge-compute segments.

CUDA toolkit 12.0 released for general availability

Source: NVIDIA Technical Blog, December 13, 2022 [10]
NVIDIA announces the newest CUDA Toolkit software release, 12.0. This release is the first major release in many years and it focuses on new programming models and CUDA application acceleration through new hardware capabilities.

Papers

HuNavSim: a ROS2 human navigation simulator for benchmarking human-aware robot navigation

Source: Evaluating Motion Planning Performance, 2022 [11]
This work presents the Human Navigation Simulator (HuNavSim), an open-source tool for the simulation of different human-agent navigation behaviors. The main goal is to ease the development and evaluation of human-aware robot navigation systems in simulation. HuNavSim includes a rich human navigation behavior and a complete set of metrics for navigation benchmarking.

3D CNN Hardware circuit for motion recognition based on FPGA

Source: IOPScience, 2022 [12]
Three-dimensional convolutional neural network (3D CNN) widely used in the fields of action recognition and video analysis. General purpose processors are difficult to achieve efficient and intensive computing. Deployment of 3D CNN based on FPGA has the advantages of low power consumption, high energy efficiency, and customizability.

Previous Hardware Acceleration in Robotics Newsletters

Past ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group meetings

  1. https://discourse.ros.org/t/hardware-acceleration-wg-meeting-13/28273/4 ↩︎

  2. Wessling, B. (2022, December 13). Mobile robot shipments increased by 53% in 2022. The Robot Report. https://www.therobotreport.com/mobile-robot-shipments-increased-by-53-in-2022/ ↩︎

  3. Making sure AMD has the complete tech package. (2022, December 12). The Next Platform. https://www-nextplatform-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.nextplatform.com/2022/12/12/making-sure-amd-has-the-complete-tech-package/amp/ ↩︎

  4. Wessling, B. (2022, December 13). Researchers develop AV object detection system with 96% accuracy. The Robot Report. https://www.therobotreport.com/researchers-develop-av-object-detection-system-with-96-accuracy/ ↩︎

  5. Allinson, M. (2022, December 8). How robotics can help manufacturers solve labor shortages. Robotics & Automation News. https://roboticsandautomationnews.com/2022/12/08/how-robotics-can-help-manufacturers-solve-labor-shortages/58540/ ↩︎

  6. Martin, D. (2022, December 8). Globalization 'almost dead,' TSMC founder says amid US moves. The Register: Enterprise Technology News and Analysis. https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/08/tsmc_founder_globalization/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=article ↩︎

  7. Martin, D. (2022, December 10). Semiconductor VC funding dives, startups plan for next boom. The Register: Enterprise Technology News and Analysis. https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/10/semiconductor_vc_funding_down_startups/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=article ↩︎

  8. O'donnell, B. (2022, December 14). Where automotive FPGAs stand in smart car designs. EDN. https://www.edn.com/where-automotive-fpgas-stand-in-smart-car-designs/ ↩︎

  9. Microchip showcases RISC-V-Based FPGA and space-compute solutions at RISC-V summit. (2022, December 9). EEJournal. https://www.eejournal.com/industry_news/microchip-showcases-risc-v-based-fpga-and-space-compute-solutions-at-risc-v-summit/ ↩︎

  10. Armstrong, R., Nertney, R., Sundaram, A., Nicely, M., Jensen, R., & Oh, F. (2022, December 13). CUDA toolkit 12.0 released for general availability. NVIDIA Technical Blog. https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/cuda-toolkit-12-0-released-for-general-availability/ ↩︎

  11. Perez, N., Otero, R., Caballero, F., & Merino, L. (2022). HuNavSim: a ROS2 human navigation simulator for benchmarking human-aware robot navigation. Evaluating Motion Planning Performance. https://motion-planning-workshop.kavrakilab.org/papers/hunavsim.pdf ↩︎

  12. Shidong, L., Long, T., Zhixian, H., Liang, Y., & Zhenzhong, L. (2022). 3D CNN Hardware circuit for motion recognition based on FPGA. IOPScience. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/2363/1/012030/pdf ↩︎