News

The age of acceleration engines

Source: The Next Platform, March 31, 2023 [1]
The old days of single-core CPUs caused inefficiencies due to the economics involved. In the 21st century, the same economics and desire for accelerated functions are playing out inside of a socket, with multiple cores and NUMA memory regions. Acceleration is etched directly into the cores.

Keys to using ROS 2 & other frameworks for medical robots

Source: The Robot Report, March 30, 2023 [2]
Tom Amlicke, Software Systems Engineer, MedAcuity, will discuss the "Keys to Using ROS 2 and Other Frameworks for Medical Robots" at the Robotics Summit & Expo. He will explore three hypothetical robotic systems and explore trade-offs and validation of these approaches.

Autonomous mobile robots market expected to expand at 22 percent a year

Source: Robotics & Automation News, March 31, 2023 [3]
In 2022, the market for autonomous mobile robots was expected to be worth $2.85 billion. By 2032, the market is anticipated to reach a value greater than $20.99 billion. The forecast period is expected to see this market expand at a compound annual growth rate of 22.1 percent, according to Fact Market Research.

Nvidia expands availability of its robotics development software and hardware

Source: Robotics & Automation News, April 4, 2023 [4]
Nvidia is making its robotics software and hardware more widely available, with Omniverse Cloud hosted on Microsoft Azure and Jetson Orin modules now available.

German robotics industry to grow 9% in 2023

Source: The Robot Report, March 29, 2023 [5]
Germany's robotics and automation industry is expected to grow by 9% by 2023, reaching 15.7 billion euros. The VDMA Robotics + Automation Association is a trade association made up of 370 member companies. Germany was the fourth most automated country worldwide in 2020 and 2021, with 397 industrial robots for every 10,000 employees.

TSMC will make the next-generation GPUs for Intel, due in 2024 and 2026

Source: Mezha, April 4, 2023 [6]
Intel has announced a partnership with TSMC to produce its next GPUs, Battlemage and Celestial, which will be based on the Xe2 and Xe3 architectures.

Bosch presents automation software for service robots at LogiMAT

Source: Automotive World, March 31, 2023 [7]
Service robots for commercial and industrial activities are a major trend, with 121,000 sold worldwide in 2021. Bosch's new software platform enables the automation of service robots quickly, easily, and efficiently, making it easier for small and medium-sized manufacturers to access the growing robotics market.

ML for robots: Hybrid learned vs end-to-end learned

Source: General Robots, February 27, 2023 [8]
This essay is about how and when to use “ML” but I’m going to be loosey goosey with my definitions. Using deep convolutional neural networks for perception is just a good idea.

Papers

CPU to FPGA power covert channel in FPGA-socs

Source: Cryptology ePrint Archive, March 24, 2023 [9]
FPGA-SoCs are popular due to their performance and flexibility, but are vulnerable to various attacks. This work proposes a covert channel between the CPU and an FPGA by modulating the usage of the Power Distribution Network. The covert channel achieves a transmission rate of up to 16.7 kbit/s and an error rate of 2.3%. It can also be used as an activation function for a hardware trojan.

A novel distributed architecture for unmanned aircraft systems based on Robot Operating System 2

Source: IET Cyber‐Systems and Robotics, February 2, 2023 [10]
A novel distributed control architecture for UASs based on ROS 2 middleware is proposed, incorporating security and safety features, localisation algorithms, and a flexible path planner. Experimental results show its effectiveness in terms of reliability, scalability, and flexibility.

Previous Hardware Acceleration in Robotics Newsletters

  • Hardware Acceleration in Robotics #53 - Robotekin, the Basque robotics and automation association, Automotive industry sets record by employing 1M robots and more
  • Hardware Acceleration in Robotics #52 - Nvidia works with TSMC, ASML and Synopsis on software to speed up chipmaking, Keys to developing autonomous vehicle software and more
  • Hardware Acceleration in Robotics #51 - PRESS RELEASE: Peer Robotics partners with Acceleration Robotics to bring hardware acceleration to their collaborative AMR, ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group #16 and more
  • Hardware Acceleration in Robotics #50 - How the EU chips act could build "Innovation capacity" in Europe, How Efinix is conquering the hurdle of hardware acceleration for devices at the edge and more
  • Hardware Acceleration in Robotics #49 - ROS 2 HAWG - meeting #15, 600 for-profit companies using ROS and ROS 2, Acceleration Robotics is growing, January 2023 robotics investments total US $521 million and more
  • Hardware Acceleration in Robotics #48 - RobotPerf, benchmarking interest for robots grows, Acceleration Robotics announces the 1st meeting of the Architectures and Processors Working Group (GTAP) of the AESEMI and more
  • Hardware Acceleration in Robotics #47 - ROS 2 HAWG #15, 2022 ROS 2 metrics report, Robot sales reach a new high in 2022, When will the mobile robot market consolidate? and more
  • Hardware Acceleration in Robotics #46 - China overtakes USA in robot density, 3 ways semiconductors enhance automation and efficiency, 10 industries China is focusing on automating and more
  • Hardware Acceleration in Robotics #45 - ROS 2 HAWG - meeting #14, What slowdown? - December 2022 robotics investments reaches $1.14B and more
  • Hardware Acceleration in Robotics #44 - ROS developers meet-up organised by acceleration robotics, China unveils new plan for wider robot use from manufacturing to agriculture and more

Past ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group meetings

  1. Courtney, M. (2023, March 31). The age of acceleration engines. The Next Platform. https://www.nextplatform.com/2023/03/31/the-age-of-acceleration-engines/ ↩︎

  2. The Robot Report Staff. (2023, March 30). Keys to using ROS 2 & other frameworks for medical robots. The Robot Report. https://www.therobotreport.com/keys-to-using-ros-2-other-frameworks-medical-robots/ ↩︎

  3. Allinson, M. (2023, March 31). Autonomous mobile robots market expected to expand at 22 percent a year. Robotics & Automation News. https://roboticsandautomationnews.com/2023/03/31/autonomous-mobile-robots-market-expected-to-expand-at-22-percent-a-year/66331/ ↩︎

  4. Allinson, M. (2023, April 4). Nvidia expands availability of its robotics development software and hardware. Robotics & Automation News. https://roboticsandautomationnews.com/2023/04/04/nvidia-expands-availability-of-its-robotics-development-software-and-hardware/66413/ ↩︎

  5. Wessling, B. (2023, March 29). German robotics industry to grow 9% in 2023. The Robot Report. https://www.therobotreport.com/german-robotics-industry-to-grow-9-in-2023/ ↩︎

  6. Svitlychnyi, S. (2023, April 4). TSMC will make the next-generation GPUs for Intel, due in 2024 and 2026. Mezha. https://mezha.media/en/2023/04/04/tsmc-will-make-the-next-generation-gpus-for-intel-due-in-2024-and-2026/ ↩︎

  7. Automotive World. (2023, March 31). Bosch presents automation software for service robots at LogiMAT. https://www.automotiveworld.com/news-releases/bosch-presents-automation-software-for-service-robots-at-logimat/ ↩︎

  8. Holson, B. (2023, February 27). ML for robots: Hybrid learned vs end-to-end learned. General Robots | Benjie Holson | Substack. https://generalrobots.substack.com/p/ml-for-robots-hybrid-learned-vs-end ↩︎

  9. Gross, M., Kunzelmann, R., & Sigl, G. (2023, March 24). CPU to FPGA power covert channel in FPGA-socs. Cryptology ePrint Archive. https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/429 ↩︎

  10. Bianchi, L., Carnevale, D., Del Frate, D., Masocco, R., Mattogno, S., Romanelli, F., & Tenaglia, A. (2023, February 2). A novel distributed architecture for unmanned aircraft systems based on Robot Operating System 2. IET Cyber‐Systems and Robotics. https://ietresearch.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1049/csy2.12083 ↩︎