News

May the best robot win

Source: Hackster.io, December 14, 2022 [1]
A ROS 2-based open reference benchmarking suite evaluates robotics computing performance to aid in choosing the best hardware and software.

Auto chips seen as biggest revenue producer in ‘23: KPMG survey

Source: FIERCE Electronics, December 15, 2022 [2]
KPMG predicts auto chip revenues will reach $200 billion by the mid-2030s and surpass $250 billion by 2040. Revenues are now about $50 billion in the auto category, but will see 8% annual growth, according to KPMG.

Europe to dish out €270 million to build RISC-V hardware and software

Source: HPCwire, December 16, 2022 [3]
The European Union will release €270 million in funds as it tries to attain technology independence by building chips based on the open RISC-V instruction set architecture.

Should you use ROS as an interface layer?

Source: The Robot Report, December 20, 2022 [4]
When clients present us with challenging problems, we often choose to use an open-source option such as Robot Operating System (ROS). ROS is built on a framework focused on automation, reliability and flexibility. The benefit of using an open source framework is that it includes a large contributing community, which is continuously developing and improving.

China readying $143 billion package for its chip firms in face of U.S. curbs

Source: Reuters, December 14, 2022 [5]
China is working on a more than 1 trillion yuan ($143 billion) support package for its semiconductor industry. A major step towards self sufficiency in chips and to counter U.S. moves aimed at slowing its technological advances. Beijing plans to roll out what will be one of its biggest fiscal incentive packages.

Lidar sensing industry sees merger, bankruptcy, stock price crunch

Source: FIERCE Electronics, December 14, 2022 [6]
The lidar sensor business is experiencing the same kinds of disruptions affecting other major tech companies, from dwindling cash reserves to layoffs and worse.

Chipmakers to spend $500b on 84 new fabs by 2024 despite shaky economy

Source: The Register, December 15, 2022 [7]
Global semiconductor industry is projected to spend more than $500 billion on 84 fabs by 2024. More than half of those began construction this year or last. In 2023 alone, semiconductor companies are building a record 33 fabs, SEMI report says.

MOV.AI releases flow ROS robot development environment

Source: Robotics & Automation News, December 19, 2022 [8]
MOV.AI, developer of the Robotics Engine Platform announced the beta release of Flow, a visual Integrated Development Environment (IDE) designed especially for ROS-based robot software.

Papers

Yolov4-tiny-Based coal gangue image recognition and FPGA implementation

Source: MDPI, November 16, 2022 [9]
Most of the deep learning coal gangue identification methods need to be performed on high-performance CPU or GPU hardware devices, which are inconvenient to use in complex underground coal mine environments. This paper proposes a method based on YOLOv4-tiny and deploys it on the low-power hardware platform FPGA.

HybriDC: A resource-efficient CPU-FPGA heterogeneous acceleration system for Lossless data compression

Source: MDPI, November 19, 2022 [10]
Lossless data compression is a crucial and computing-intensive application. To reduce the CPU overhead, FPGA-based accelerators have been proposed to offload compression workloads. HybriDC provides a universal end-to-end compression acceleration framework with application compatibility and performance scalability.

Previous Hardware Acceleration in Robotics Newsletters

Past ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group meetings

  1. Bild, N. (2022, December 14). May the best robot win. Hackster.io. https://www.hackster.io/news/may-the-best-robot-win-d3d2d2d65ade ↩︎

  2. Hamblen, M. (2022, December 15). Auto chips seen as biggest revenue producer in ‘23: KPMG survey. FIERCE Electronics. https://www.fierceelectronics.com/sensors/auto-chips-seen-biggest-revenue-producer-23-kpmg-survey ↩︎

  3. Shah, A. (2022, December 16). Europe to dish out €270 million to build RISC-V hardware and software. HPCwire. https://www.hpcwire.com/2022/12/16/europe-to-dish-out-e270-million-to-build-risc-v-hardware-and-software/ ↩︎

  4. Feick, A., & Aerobotix. (2022, December 20). Should you use ROS as an interface layer? The Robot Report. https://www.therobotreport.com/should-you-use-ros-as-an-interface-layer/ ↩︎

  5. Zhu, J. (2022, December 14). Exclusive: China readying $143 billion package for its chip firms in face of U.S. curbs. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/technology/china-plans-over-143-bln-push-boost-domestic-chips-compete-with-us-sources-2022-12-13/ ↩︎

  6. Hamblen, M. (2022, December 14). Lidar sensing industry sees merger, bankruptcy, stock price crunch. FIERCE Electronics. https://www.fierceelectronics.com/sensors/lidar-sensing-industry-sees-merger-bankruptcy-stock-price-crunch ↩︎

  7. Martin, D. (2022, December 15). Chipmakers to spend $500b on 84 new Fabs by 2024. The Register: Enterprise Technology News and Analysis. https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/15/chipmakers_500b_fab_investment/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=article ↩︎

  8. Allinson, M. (2022, December 19). MOV.AI releases flow ROS robot development environment. Robotics & Automation News. https://roboticsandautomationnews.com/2022/12/19/mov-ai-releases-flow-ros-robot-development-environment/58690/ ↩︎

  9. Shanyong, X., Yujie, Z., Yourui, H., & Tao, H. (2022, November 16). Yolov4-tiny-Based coal gangue image recognition and FPGA implementation. MDPI. https://www.mdpi.com/2072-666X/13/11/1983 ↩︎

  10. Puguang, L., Zziling, W., Chuan, Y., & Shuhui, C. (2022, November 19). HybriDC: A resource-efficient CPU-FPGA heterogeneous acceleration system for Lossless data compression. MDPI. https://www.mdpi.com/2072-666X/13/11/2029 ↩︎