News

India’s first edition of ROSCon 2023 energises robotics community in country

Source: The New Indian Express, December 19, 2023 [1]
The event featured seven innovative robotic startup showcases, 14 talks on ROS, and four-panel discussions.

Learnings from recent robotics investment data

Source: Robots & Startups , December 10, 2023 [2]
Robotics investment remains steady despite the challenging financial climate, with larger investors investing more in early-stage companies. However, the difficulty in raising from LPs is affecting younger and early-stage funds. In 2023, robotics investment is shifted towards fewer transactions and larger amounts, reflecting conservatism.

CHIPS act and U.S. fabs

Source: Semiwiki, December 19, 2023 [3]
The CHIPS Act, signed into law by President Biden in August 2022, provides $52.7 billion to the US semiconductor industry, including $39 billion in manufacturing incentives. The act, which began in November 2019, aims to build a wafer fab in the US, with the US government promising to provide subsidies.

Chinese chip companies are turning to Malaysia for their high-end chip, GPU needs

Source: Firstpost, December 18, 2023 [4]
China's semiconductor design and manufacturing companies are turning to Malaysian companies, for the assembly of high-end chips and GPUs. As the US tightens restrictions on the sale of high-end GPUs, smaller Chinese semiconductor firms are grappling with issues in advanced packaging

Source: Robotics & Automation, December 13, 2023 [5]
It is no longer a surprise that businesses are turning to robotics and automation to improve the efficiency of their daily operations – companies around the world have started to realise that these technologies are essential to remaining competitive.

Robot operating systems market to reach $1.8 billion by 2032 at 12.9% CAGR

Source: Yahoo Finance, December 14, 2023 [6]
Allied Market Research's report on the Robot Operating Systems Market reveals a global opportunity analysis and industry forecast for 2023-2032. The report predicts a CAGR of 12.9% from 2023 to 2032, with the industry generating $534.2 million in 2022 and $1.8 billion by 2032.

The use of semiconductors in automotive manufacturing

Source: AZoM, December 18, 2023 [7]
With the automotive sector aiming towards more reliable, efficient, and safe cars, the incorporation of semiconductors in vehicles has seen a major boost. The number of semiconductor chips in a modern car varies with the type; however, one can expect the number in the range of 1000 – 3500.

Hardware retailer adopts mobile robots for inventory control

Source: Mobile Robot Guide, December 8, 2023 [8]
Stine, a 13-store hardware retail chain in Louisiana and Mississippi, aims to improve operational efficiencies and customer service by leveraging robotics to offload manual tasks and ease labor shortages. Additionally, the retailer aims to improve on-shelf product availability through accurate data and analytics.

Papers

An optimized FPGA architecture for machine learning spplications

Source: Science Direct, December 4, 2023 [9]
This paper presents an FPGA architecture with posit multipliers that outperforms IEEE-754 multipliers in terms of delay and area. The proposed architecture outperforms the Stratix IV and Stratix 10 FPGAs in terms of critical path delay, with improvements of 25.5% and 43%, respectively, and consumes 10% less area and 22% less power.

REFRESH FPGAs: Sustainable FPGA Chiplet Architectures

Source: arXiv, November 28, 2023 [10]
The demand for agile computational power in edge and cloud infrastructure is increasing, but addressing the environmental impacts is crucial. A life-cycle view of sustainability is needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. FPGA architectures have not changed significantly, but REFRESH FPGAs can build new devices and architectures from retired dies using 2.5D integration. This approach leverages renewable energy integration into data centers, improving sustainability and amortizing cost investment over a longer lifetime.

Previous Hardware Acceleration in Robotics Newsletters

Past ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group meetings

  1. India’s first edition of ROSCon 2023 energises robotics community in country. (2023, December 19). The New Indian Express. https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/bengaluru/2023/dec/19/indias-first-edition-of-roscon-2023energises-robotics-community-in-country-2642777.html ↩︎

  2. Keay, A. (2023, December 10). Learnings from recent robotics investment data. Robots & Startups . https://249x.substack.com/p/learnings-from-recent-robotics-investment ↩︎

  3. Jewell, B. (2023, December 19). CHIPS act and U.S. Fabs. Semiwiki. Retrieved December 20, 2023, from https://semiwiki.com/semiconductor-services/semiconductor-intelligence/339873-chips-act-and-u-s-fabs/ ↩︎

  4. Chinese chip companies are turning to Malaysia for their high-end chip, GPU needs. (2023, December 18). Firstpost. https://www.firstpost.com/tech/chinese-chip-companies-are-turning-to-malaysia-for-their-high-end-chip-gpu-needs-13517152.html ↩︎

  5. O'Sullivan-Dale, U. (2023, December 13). Robotics & automation’s 2024 trends forecast. Robotics & Automation. https://www.roboticsandautomationmagazine.co.uk/features/robotics-automations-2024-trends-forecast.html ↩︎

  6. Robot operating systems market to reach $1.8 billion by 2032 at 12.9% CAGR. (2023, December 14). Yahoo Finance. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/robot-operating-systems-market-reach-020000900.html ↩︎

  7. Abbasi, I. (2023, December 18). The use of semiconductors in automotive manufacturing. AZoM. https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=23253 ↩︎

  8. Oitzman, M. (2023, December 8). Hardware retailer adopts mobile robots for inventory control. Mobile Robot Guide. https://mobilerobotguide.com/2023/12/08/hardware-retailer-adopts-mobile-robots-inventory-control/?spMailingID=104669&puid=2502618&E=2502618&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=104669 ↩︎

  9. An optimized FPGA architecture for machine learning spplications. (2023, December 4). Science Direct. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1434841123004855 ↩︎

  10. Zhou, P., Zhuang, J., Cahoon, S., Tang, Y., Yang, Z., Chen, X., Shi, Y., Hu, J., & Jones, A. K. (2023, November 28). REFRESH FPGAs: Sustainable FPGA Chiplet Architectures. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2312.02991.pdf ↩︎