News

Acceleration Robotics announces ROBOTCORE® ROS 2 and RTPS, boosting ROS 2 communications from 62x to thousands-fold faster

Source: Acceleration Robotics, November 21, 2023 [1]
Unleashing Unprecedented Speed in Robotics, Acceleration Robotics' ROBOTCORE® ROS 2 and RTPS Pave the Way Towards Robot-specific Chips Setting New Benchmarks in Performance, Energy-efficiency and Reliability for ROS 2 Networking.

Acceleration Robotics unveils ROBOTCORE® UDP/IP for ultra-fast, deterministic robot networking communications

Source: Acceleration Robotics, November 20, 2023 [2]
ROBOTCORE® UDP/IP is a Trailblazing FPGA Robot IP Core Resolving Networking Indeterminism in Robotics and Elevating Robotic Networking to New Heights of Speed.

The Program Agenda for ROSCon India is out

Source: , November 1, 2023 [3]
ROSCon India is the official domestic ROSCon for India, held by the local ROS community with the support of Open Robotics. Targeted at the local Indian robotics community, it provides an opportunity for ROS developers, hobbyists, researchers and industry professionals alike, to spend two days together learning from and networking with each other.

Microsoft adds FPGA-powered network accelerator to Azure

Source: The Register, November 21, 2023 [4]
Microsoft has introduced Azure Boost, a cloud hardware upgrade that aims to enhance the performance of all future instance types in its big blue cloud. Azure Boost offloads server virtualization processes onto purpose-built software and hardware, freeing up CPU resources for guest virtual machines.

Boosting custom ROS graphs using NVIDIA Isaac transport for ROS

Source: NVIDIA Technical Blog, November 20, 2023 [5]
NVIDIA Isaac Transport for ROS (NITROS) utilizes two hardware-acceleration features: type adaptation and type negotiation. Type adaptation optimizes data format for specific hardware accelerators, while type negotiation allows ROS nodes to advertise supported types for optimal performance.

Open robotics releases gazebo harmonic simulator

Source: The Robot Report, November 21, 2023 [6]
Open Robotics recently released Gazebo Harmonic, which is the eighth version of its open-source simulator. The company said this is one of its biggest Gazebo releases to date.

AMD delivers high performance, high efficiency CPUs and GPUs for all HPC use cases

Source: HPCwire, November 15, 2023 [7]
High-performance computing demands complex real-world problems and faster simulations, leading to increased demand for AMD solutions. AMD powers the fastest supercomputer and eight of the top ten most energy-efficient supercomputers on the Green500 list. The Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the fastest, passing the exaflop barrier with only 22.70 MW of energy consumption, making it #8 on the list.

China's hoard of chip-making tools: National treasures or expensive spare parts?

Source: Semiwiki, November 20, 2023 [8]
In the film Raiders of the Lost Ark, a warehouse filled with artifacts is compared to China's stockpiled semiconductor production equipment. China has exceeded production levels, with sales reaching 46% and 48% of total revenues in the third quarter, according to ASML and Lam Research.

Papers

Source: Aalborg University's Research Portal, October 2, 2023 [9]
The paper introduces a real-time human interaction detection system using RGB-D cameras for context-aware navigation in mobile robots. The system uses a convolutional neural network architecture and localizes interactions using human detection. It integrates detected human interaction zones into robot navigation costmaps, allowing for social spaces-aware planning.

Design and implementation of low-power, high-speed, reliable and secured Hardware Accelerator using 28 nm technology for biomedical devices

Source: Science Direct, October 10, 2023 [10]
This paper presents a Hardware Accelerator (HA) for Wireless Body Sensor Networks (WBSNs) using 28 nm technology on Zynq system-on-a-chip (SOC). The HA is implemented using Vivado and VITIS high-level synthesis tool, integrating with Xilinx tools. The HA improves 81% in speed compared to existing methods and enhances power and area of the WBSN, demonstrating the potential of 28 nm technology in wireless sensor networks.

Previous Hardware Acceleration in Robotics Newsletters

Past ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group meetings

  1. https://news.accelerationrobotics.com/robotcore-ros-2-and-rtps-ultrafast-networking-communications/ ↩︎

  2. https://news.accelerationrobotics.com/robotcore-udp-ip-fast-robot-networking-communications/ ↩︎

  3. https://rosconindia.in ↩︎

  4. Sharwood, S. (2023, November 21). Microsoft adds FPGA-powered network accelerator to Azure. The Register. https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/21/azure_boost_network_accelerator/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=article ↩︎

  5. Bhide, A. (2023, November 20). Boosting custom ROS graphs using NVIDIA Isaac transport for ROS. NVIDIA Technical Blog. https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/boosting-custom-ros-graphs-using-nvidia-isaac-transport-for-ros/ ↩︎

  6. The Robot Report Staff. (2023, November 21). Open robotics releases gazebo harmonic simulator. The Robot Report. https://www.therobotreport.com/open-robotics-gazebo-harmonic-simulator/ ↩︎

  7. Ware, A. (2023, November 15). AMD delivers high performance, high efficiency CPUs and GPUs for all HPC use cases. HPCwire. https://www.hpcwire.com/2023/11/20/amd-delivers-high-performance-high-efficiency-cpus-and-gpus-for-all-hpc-use-cases/ ↩︎

  8. Addison, C. (2023, November 20). China's hoard of chip-making tools: National treasures or expensive spare parts? Semiwiki. Retrieved November 22, 2023, from https://semiwiki.com/lithography/338218-chinas-hoard-of-chip-making-tools-national-treasures-or-expensive-spare-parts/ ↩︎

  9. Schwörer, T., Schmidt, J. E., & Chrysostomou, D. (2023, October 2). Nav2CAN: Achieving context aware navigation in ROS2 using Nav2 and RGB-D sensing. Aalborg University's Research Portal. https://vbn.aau.dk/en/publications/nav2can-achieving-context-aware-navigation-in-ros2-using-nav2-and ↩︎

  10. Mavinkattimath, S., Khanai, R., Torse, D., & Iyer, N. (2023, October 10). Design and implementation of low-power, high-speed, reliable and secured Hardware Accelerator using 28 nm technology for biomedical devices. Science Direct. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1746809423009874 ↩︎