News

Vote now: 2023 ROS 2 technical steering committee community representative election

Source: ROS Discourse, October 10, 2023 [1]
The 2023 ROS 2 TSC Community Rep Election is now open, with six candidates competing for two positions on the Technical Steering Committee. The election will run until October 20, 2023, with winners announced on the last day of ROSCon 2023 in New Orleans. Voting will use the Condorcet voting method 7, with candidates rated in their preferred order.

Integrating ROS 2 with Microchip’s PolarFire® SoC FPGA

Source: Microchip, October 10, 2023 [2]
Acceleration Robotics and Microchip have collaborated to produce the Robot Operating System (ROS) 2 for the RISC-V-based PolarFire® SoC FPGA Icicle Kit. Learn more about the framework in this blog post.

August 2023 robotics investment totals $851 million

Source: Robotics Business Review, October 2, 2023 [3]
August 2023 robotics funding equaled $851 million, the result of 48 investments. Total 2023 funding for the months of January through August comes to approximately $8.85 billion.

Is Nvidia abusing its market position?

Source: HackerNoon, October 4, 2023 [4]
EU regulators are investigating Team Green's market position amid a surge in interest in generative AI. A raid on Nvidia's French offices raised suspicions of anticompetitive practices. If proven, the company could face fines of up to 10% of its annual turnover under EU competition laws.

Intel to spin out FPGA segment with IPO in two to three years

Source: FIERCE Electronics, October 4, 2023 [5]
Intel plans to spin out its programmable chip unit, operating it as a standalone business in January and then seeking a public offering for stock in the next two to three years.

Accelerating and reducing the cost of semiconductor process development

Source: EEJournal, October 10, 2023 [6]
Recently, the pace of semiconductor fabrication processes has increased, with topics such as boosting semiconductor fab productivity and enhancing the efficiency and performance of silicon chips.

AMD to acquire open-source AI software expert Nod.ai

Source: AMD, October 10, 2023 [7]
AMD has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Nod.ai, a leading AI software company, to expand its open software capabilities. The acquisition will enhance AMD's AI solutions for various processors and GPUs, aligning with its AI growth strategy.

Gearing up for level 4 vehicles

Source: Semiconductor Engineering, October 5, 2023 [8]
Autonomy will likely come in different stages of L3+. What’s missing, and which technology and business challenges need to be solved.

Papers

AutonomROS: A reconROS-based autonomonous driving unit

Source: arXiv, September 5, 2023 [9]
Autonomous driving is a growing research area, requiring computational power. Heterogeneous computing platforms like systems-on-chip offer computational performance and flexibility. ReconROS, a framework for robotics applications, extends ROS 2 and allows for computing-intense functions to be mapped to hardware. AutonomROS integrates ROS 2 package Navigation 2 with custom software and hardware-accelerated functions. It also introduces a new communication middleware for shared memory communication.

Platform-aware FPGA system architecture generation based on MLIR

Source: arXiv, September 22, 2023 [10]
The Olympus multilevel intermediate representation dialect and Olympusopt are proposed for optimizing FPGA acceleration in modern computing, particularly in big data and machine learning applications. This automation is extensible and reusable, allowing for easy integration of accelerators into FPGA platforms with key features like high bandwidth memory.

Previous Hardware Acceleration in Robotics Newsletters

Past ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group meetings

  1. https://discourse.ros.org/t/vote-now-2023-ros-2-technical-steering-committee-community-representative-election/34019 ↩︎

  2. Integrating ROS 2 with Microchip’s PolarFire® SoC FPGA. (2023, October 10). Microchip. https://www.microchip.com/en-us/about/media-center/blog/2023/integrating-ros-2-with-microchip-polarfire-soc-fpga ↩︎

  3. Kara, D. (2023, October 2). August 2023 robotics investments total US $2.1 billion. Robotics Business Review. https://www.roboticsbusinessreview.com/rbr-investment/august-2023-robotics-investments-totals-851-million/?spMailingID=100058&puid=2502618&E=2502618&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=100058 ↩︎

  4. Khan, S. (2023, October 4). Is Nvidia abusing its market position? HackerNoon. https://hackernoon.com/is-nvidia-abusing-its-market-position ↩︎

  5. Hamblen, M. (2023, October 4). Intel to spin out FPGA segment with IPO in two to three years. FIERCE Electronics. https://www.fierceelectronics.com/electronics/intel-spin-out-fpga-segment-ipo-two-three-years ↩︎

  6. Maxfield, M. (2023, October 6). Accelerating and reducing the cost of semiconductor process development. EEJournal. https://www.eejournal.com/article/accelerating-and-reducing-the-cost-of-semiconductor-process-development/ ↩︎

  7. AMD to acquire open-source AI software expert Nod.ai. (2023, October 10). AMD. https://www.amd.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-10-10-amd-to-acquire-open-source-ai-software-expert-nod-.html ↩︎

  8. Koon, J. (2023, October 5). Gearing up for level 4 vehicles. Semiconductor Engineering. https://semiengineering.com/gearing-up-for-level-4-vehicles/ ↩︎

  9. Lienen, C., Brede, M., Karger, D., Koch, K., Logan, D., Mazur, J., Nowosad, A. P., Schnelle, A., Waizy, M., & Platzner, M. (2023, September 5). AutonomROS: A reconROS-based autonomonous driving unit. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.02026.pdf ↩︎

  10. Soldavini, S., & Pilato, C. (2023, September 22). Platform-aware FPGA system architecture generation based on MLIR. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.12917.pdf ↩︎