News

EU legislators strike deal on €43B chips plan

Source: POLITICO, April 19, 2023 [1]
The Chips Act aims to boost the bloc’s share in global semiconductor production and help it compete with the US and China.

Global semiconductor manufacturing equipment sales reach all-time record $108 billion

Source: Robotics & Automation News, April 18, 2023 [2]
Worldwide sales of semiconductor manufacturing equipment increased 5 percent from $102.6 billion in 2021 to an all-time record of $107.6 billion last year, SEMI, the industry association representing the global electronics design and manufacturing supply chain.

Over 150,000 picking robots to be installed by 2030

Source: Robotics Business Review, April 13, 2023 [3]
Interact Analysis expects annual shipments will jump from less than 2,000 in 2022, to just above 50,000 by the end of the decade.

AV Compute: Deploying to an edge supercomputer

Source: Cruise, April 17, 2023 [4]
The Fully Driverless AV problem is a complex one that requires a vertically integrated, tightly-coupled HW/SW approach to addressing the growing computational complexity. Cruise is solving this problem in San Francisco, where their AVs have already accumulated over 1,000,000 miles of fully autonomous miles without a safety driver.

Packaging robots market forecast to worth $7.5 billion by 2032

Source: Robotics & Automation News, April 19, 2023 [5]
The global packaging robots market is valued at $3.8 billion in 2022 to $7.5 billion by the end of 2032 and is forecasted to expand at a robust compound annual growth rate of 7 percent from 2022 to 2032, according to data released by Fact.MR, a market research and competitive intelligence provider.

Nvidia is AI hardware’s growth leader now, but Intel, AMD and others are closing fast

Source: MarketWatch, April 18, 2023 [6]
AI hardware, which was a $10 billion industry in 2021, is expected to be an $89 billion industry by 2030.

Programming robots: Keeping the code clean

Source: General Robots, March 22, 2023 [7]
Programming is programming and best practices from other domains mostly work out well. However there are a few things about robots that create unique challenges.

Build high performance robotic applications with NVIDIA Isaac ROS developer preview 3

Source: NVIDIA Technical Blog, April 18, 2023 [8]
NVIDIA Isaac ROS is empowering ROS developers with accelerated computing packages and tools to develop high-performance, power-efficient robotics applications. They have pioneered accelerated computing into ROS 2, and implemented adaptation and type negotiation to improve ROS performance on compute platforms. The latest NVIDIA Isaac ROS Developer Preview 3 release offers major updates and enhancements.

Create realistic robotics simulations with ROS 2 MoveIt and NVIDIA Isaac Sim

Source: NVIDIA Technical Blog, April 18, 2023 [9]
PickNik Robotics is exploring the use of NVIDIA Isaac Sim in an internal R&D project to improve perception for manipulation and augment with MoveIt Studio. This post shows how to integrate MoveIt 2 with a robot simulated in Isaac Sim.

Papers

RTIndeX: exploiting hardware-accelerated GPU raytracing for database indexing

Source: arXiv, March 2, 2023 [10]
Data management on GPUs has become increasingly important due to a rise in processing power and available GPU memory. To speed up query processing, an indexing mechanism built into modern GPUs is proposed: the raytracing hardware accelerator provided by NVIDIA RTX cards. To evaluate the pros, cons, and usefulness of the raytracing pipeline for database indexing, twelve dimensions are evaluated. Results show that RX is competitive against traditional counterparts in a variety of situations.

Low-cost automation: an open source laser-triangulation sensor based on ROS2

Source: Qucosa - HTWK Leipzig, March 10, 2023 [11]
The proposed system provides a low-cost alternative to commercially available sensors while achieving comparable accuracy, making automation more accessible.

Previous Hardware Acceleration in Robotics Newsletters

  • Hardware Acceleration in Robotics #55 - India is the world’s next tech manufacturing hub, EU chips act likely to get green light on April 18 -sources and more
  • Hardware Acceleration in Robotics #54 - The age of acceleration engines, Keys to using ROS 2 & other frameworks for medical robots, Autonomous mobile robots market expected to expand at 22 percent a year and more
  • 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

Past ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group meetings

  1. Haeck, P. (2023, April 19). EU legislators strike deal on €43B chips plan. POLITICO. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-legislator-strike-deal-e43-billion-plan-boost-chips-production/ ↩︎

  2. Allinson, M. (2023, April 18). Global semiconductor manufacturing equipment sales reach all-time record $108 billion. Robotics & Automation News. https://roboticsandautomationnews.com/2023/04/18/global-semiconductor-manufacturing-equipment-sales-reach-all-time-record-108-billion/67347/ ↩︎

  3. Wessling, B. (2023, April 13). Over 150,000 picking robots to be installed by 2030. Robotics Business Review. https://www.roboticsbusinessreview.com/news/over-150000-picking-robots-to-be-installed-by-2030/ ↩︎

  4. Venkataramani, G., & Narayanaswami, R. (2023, April 17). AV compute: Deploying to an edge supercomputer. Cruise Self Driving Cars | Autonomous Vehicles | Driverless Rides | Cruise. https://getcruise.com/news/blog/2023/av-compute-deploying-to-an-edge-supercomputer/ ↩︎

  5. Allinson, M. (2023, April 19). Packaging robots market forecast to worth $7.5 billion by 2032. Robotics & Automation News. https://roboticsandautomationnews.com/2023/04/19/packaging-robots-market-forecast-to-worth-7-5-billion-by-2032/67410/ ↩︎

  6. Newman, D. (2023, April 18). Nvidia is AI hardware's growth leader now, but Intel, AMD and others are closing fast. MarketWatch. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nvidia-is-ai-hardwares-leader-now-but-intel-amd-and-others-are-closing-fast-8ad6f23f ↩︎

  7. Holson, B. (2023, March 22). Programming robots: Keeping the code clean. General Robots | Benjie Holson | Substack. https://generalrobots.substack.com/p/programming-robots-keeping-the-code ↩︎

  8. Harihapura, S. (2023, April 18). Build high performance robotic applications with NVIDIA Isaac ROS developer preview 3. NVIDIA Technical Blog. https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/build-high-performance-robotic-applications-with-nvidia-isaac-ros-developer-preview-3/ ↩︎

  9. Rasmussen, M. (2023, April 18). Create realistic robotics simulations with ROS 2 MoveIt and NVIDIA Isaac Sim. NVIDIA Technical Blog. https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/create-realistic-robotics-simulations-with-ros-2-moveit-and-nvidia-isaac-sim/ ↩︎

  10. Henneberg, J., & Schuhknecht, F. (2023, March 2). RTIndeX: exploiting hardware-accelerated GPU raytracing for database indexing. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.01139.pdf ↩︎

  11. Schauer, M., Wolfram, T. E., Czekansky, J., & Bienhaus, D. (2023, March 10). Low-cost automation: an open source laser-triangulation sensor based on ROS2. Qucosa - HTWK Leipzig. https://htwk-leipzig.qucosa.de/api/qucosa%3A83958/attachment/ATT-0/?L=1 ↩︎