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Robotics/Drones

Reference design speeds MCU-based Alexa-Built-in products

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STMicroelectronics has released an Amazon-qualified reference design package for smart connected devices leveraging Alexa Voice Service (AVS) Integration for AWS IoT Core, which can be used to create Alexa Built-in products using simple microcontrollers (MCUs).

AVS Integration for AWS IoT Core has the ability to transform the way users interact with smart “things,” bringing cloud-based Alexa experiences to items such as toasters, cookers, thermostats, blinds, hairdryers, and many others with no need for significant investment in electronic hardware. This could hasten the end for traditional buttons and dials, leading to new generations of products that offer easy and natural user interactions, adaptable smart features, and access to cloud services such as cooking advice or reordering of consumables.

ST’s Amazon-qualified solution jump-starts the design of Alexa-enabled appliance controllers, with Alexa voice-user-interface software already integrated on high-performing MCUs of the STM32 family. The energy-efficient STM32, being the world’s most successful 32-bit Arm Cortex-M MCU family, is ideal for low-cost, small, and simple connected devices that require state-of-the-art features such as far-field audio capture and natural-language understanding.

ST’s AVS Integration for AWS IoT Core reference design contains a compact 36mm x 65mm main board that combines a high-performance STM32H743 MCU and Wi-Fi module.

Unlike other devices commonly used for Alexa products, such as digital signal processors (DSPs) and flashless processors, STM32 MCUs integrate all necessary system features including powerful audio front-end processing, local wake-word detection, communication interfaces, and memory, including RAM and Flash, in a single chip. This integration enables the board to have small dimensions and a simple layout for cost-effective deployment in customers’ end products.

The audio front end delivers outstanding far-field voice detection, even in noisy environments and with closely spaced microphones. Created by ST Authorized Partner DSP Concepts, distributed by ST as part of the STM32 MCU, and supported by ST channels, the front end comes with a free Audio Weaver tool license to help users easily fine-tune their designs.

Leveraging the features of the high-performance STM32 microcontrollers, users can customize and scale their designs by adding enhancements such as a second wake word, extra local commands, and a graphical display to combine with the voice-command capability for an even more compelling user experience.

Further simplifying prototyping and development, the reference design hardware includes an audio daughterboard as a separate module. This contains an ST FDA903D audio codec, user LEDs and buttons, and two MP23DB01HP MEMS microphones spaced at 36mm for size-constrained products such as power switched plugs. The hardware’s modularity lets users implement a custom daughterboard if application-specific mic spacing, acoustics, and user-interface definitions are needed.

The reference design includes fully developed software that provides the features needed to support Alexa products, including Audio-capture software; Advanced Audio Front End (AFE) with noise reduction, echo cancellation and advanced beam-forming signal processing for far-field audio detection; Amazon “Alexa” Wake Word; Connectivity to AWS IoT; Audio output software

Working with this reference design enables product designers to certify new end products with AVS faster and more easily than bringing up the entire system independently. Both the hardware and software content can be easily adapted to support individual customers’ new-product concepts.

The bill of materials (BOM) for the reference design is engineered to be less than $10 when purchasing the components in high volumes. Please contact your ST sales office for pricing options and sample requests.

AMD Ryzen embedded V2000 CPUs now on COM express modules

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Congatec significantly broadens the application areas of its AMD Ryzen Embedded processor-based COM Express Type 6 platforms towards smaller but more powerful system designs by premiering the brand new AMD Ryzen Embedded V2000 processor launched on the COM Express Compact footprint. The new congatec conga-TCV2 powered by the new Ryzen Embedded V2000 processor impresses with up to 2x generational uplift in performance per watt [1], a 2x more CPU cores compared to previous generations [2], at only 76% of the previous size [3] on a 100% pin-compatible form factor.

The powerful AMD Ryzen Embedded V2000 SoC integrates AMD Radeon graphics, with up to 7 GPU compute units. The performance per watt improvements of the new ’Zen 2’ cores used by the CPU are based on the 7nm manufacturing process technology. The architecture optimization also adds an estimated 15% more instructions per clock to this improvement [4].

With up to 8 cores and 16 threads on a single BGA footprint, the new Computer-on-Modules are great candidates for digitization and parallel-processed edge analytics – including workload balancing and consolidation enabled by virtual machines on the basis of congatec’s RTS real-time hypervisor implementations.

Further application areas include all standard embedded applications, ranging from industrial box PCs and thin clients to embedded computing systems with impressive compute and graphics performance. Other applications include smart robotics, e-mobility, and autonomous vehicles that use deep learning to optimize their situational awareness.

These modules offer up to double the compute performance per watt and double the core count over the previous generations. Thanks to symmetrical multiprocessing capabilities, they also provide particularly high parallel processing performance with up to 16 threads. The modules feature 4MB L2 cache, 8MB L3 cache, and up to 32GB energy-efficient and fast dual-channel 64-bit DDR4 memory with up to 3200 MT/s and ECC support for maximum data security. The integrated AMD Radeon graphics with up to 7 compute units continue to support applications and use cases that need high-performance graphics computing.

The conga-TCV2 Computer-on-Module supports up to four independent displays with up to 4k60 UHD resolution over 3x DisplayPort 1.4/HDMI 2.1 and 1x LVDS/eDP. Further performance-oriented interfaces include 1x PEG 3.0 x8 and 8x PCIe Gen 3 Lanes, 2x USB 3.1 Gen 2, 8x USB 2.0, up to 2x SATA Gen 3, 1x Gbit Ethernet, 8 GPOIs I/Os, SPI, LPC, as well as 2x legacy UART provided by the board controller.

The supported hypervisor and operating systems include RTS Hypervisor as well as Microsoft Windows 10, Linux/Yocto, Android Q, and Wind River VxWorks. For safety-critical applications, the integrated AMD Secure Processor helps with hardware-accelerated encryption and decryption of RSA, SHA, and AES. TPM support is onboard as well [6].

Latest release of ROS allow for rapid development, testing, debugging of distributed robotics system

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Real-Time Innovations (RTI) announced the availability of the Connext 6 ROS Middleware Wrapper (RMW) Layer, bringing the field-proven, production-grade strength of RTI Connext 6 to the latest release of the Robot Operating System (ROS 2). Robotics software developers can now leverage the ROS 2 ecosystem together with RTI Connext Tools to more rapidly develop, test, and debug distributed robotics systems. RTI will showcase the new Connext RMW layer at ROS World on November 12. 
 
ROS 2 offers an open-source framework for building robotic systems. RTI is the leading supplier of software compliant with the Data Distribution Service (DDS) standard, which provides the connectivity backbone for ROS 2. The new Connext 6 RMW layer now provides a best-of-both-worlds solution by connecting the ROS 2 ecosystem with RTI’s latest software and Connext Tools.
 
The new Connext RMW layer offers: The flexibility of the ROS 2 platform combined with complete access to RTI Connext tools for improved distributed system visualization and debugging capabilities; Support for RTI Connext DDS Professional in Connext 6, used for industrial and military robotics applications where reliability and scalability are of paramount importance; Support for RTI Connext DDS Micro; Support for future releases of the Connext Product Suite
 
RTI delivers the connectivity framework for safe, secure, reliable operations in complex, cooperative, and autonomous robotics systems. RTI’s software is proven in robotics systems around the world including automotive, medical, manufacturing, aerospace & defense, and more.
 
RTI Connext DDS is active in over 250 autonomous vehicle projects and more than 50 commercial autonomous systems, such as Aptiv, Baidu Apollo, Voyage, and Xpeng Motors. In June 2020, RTI joined the Autoware Foundation, an open alliance for autonomous driving technology, where RTI is leveraging its experience with ROS 2 to help advance the foundation’s Autoware.IO and Autoware.Auto initiatives. RTI is the only DDS vendor to be named an AUTOSAR Development Partner and contributes to the development of the AUTOSAR standard for highly autonomous vehicles. 
 
RTI Connext DDS can also be found at the core of NASA’s rovers and space robots, leveraged by the European Space Agency’s robotic arm, and implemented in TechnipFMC’s semi-autonomous underwater ROVs.  It is also widely used in building and running robotics projects in leading universities around the world. More recently, RTI Connext DDS was used by the collegiate teams entered in the Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC) as they participated in the September hackathon, one of several leading up to the IAC final race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on October 23, 2021. 

Development kit enables rapid development for 1 kW to 10 kW applications

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ON Semiconductor has introduced its advanced and flexible Motor Development Kit to accelerate the development of more efficient motor control solutions for applications ranging from less than 1 kW to over 10 kW.

Electric motors account for over half of all the power generated and consumed by industrialized countries. The majority of those motors are AC induction motors, which have an average efficiency of just 44%. In order to improve efficiency, motor drives designers must understand how these and other types of motors operate under all load conditions, and intelligently compensating for variable conditions. The Motor Development Kit addresses the urgent need for improved energy usage.

The Motor Development Kit (MDK) comprises one of a growing number of Power Boards, connected to a Universal Controller Board (UCB). The Power Boards feature various incarnations of ON Semiconductor inverter solutions for motor drive, from high voltage integrated modules to low voltage, discrete MOSFETs. The UCB is a common control platform that interfaces with any Power Board to enable engineers to evaluate alternative motor control techniques for various types of motors and at a wide variety of power levels.

Intelligent motor control requires a flexible and programmable approach. The UCB is based on the Zynq-7000 SoC family from Xilinx, Inc. This powerful device integrates two ARM Cortex-A9 processor cores alongside an FPGA fabric, providing the optimum combination of software and hardware configuration. The board also features a 10-channel differential ADC, 12 PWM channels, and a number of configurable digital peripherals. Communication ports include USB, JTAG, and UART, as well as a Gigabit Ethernet PHY.

Efficient motor control represents a major focus of ON Semiconductor. The company is applying its extensive experience and a large portfolio of discrete devices, Intelligent Power Modules (IPMs) and Transfer Molded Power Integrated Modules (TMPIMs) to increase efficiency. The MDK brings together its expertise and technologies to help engineers quickly develop solutions that deliver greater energy efficiency, in any application that uses electric motors.

ON Semiconductor’s MDK provides an ‘out of the box’ experience for evaluating variable speed motor inverter solutions. To enable this, the modular ecosystem includes the UCB and a number of power evaluation boards, developed using ON Semiconductor’s best in class power components. Support for software development comes from Xilinx in the form of the Vivado Design Suite for High-Level Synthesis. The UCB can also be programmed using Python, through Xilinx’s open source project, PYNQ.

The MDK currently supports two motor power boards; the SECO-1KW-MCTRL-GEVB, which is suitable for driving motors up to 1 kW, and the SECO-MDK-4KW-65SMP31-GEVB, for driving motors up to 4 kW. Both of these power boards use ON Semiconductor’s IPM technology and will be available in Q4, 2020. An additional motor power board will be released in Q1, 2021, based on ON Semiconductor’s TMPIM technology, designed to drive motors up to 10 kW. Expect further power boards and expanded design support to be added to the MDK ecosystem.

Tiny, dual-antenna GPS/GNSS module provides accurate positioning and heading

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Septentrio expands its GNSS module portfolio with a mosaic-H heading receiver. With dual antenna capabilities, this surface mount module delivers reliable heading & pitch or heading & roll information on top of centimeter-level positioning. mosaic-H is the new addition to Septentrio’s existing mosaic module family, which already includes high-performance RTK and timing modules as well as modules with integrated GNSS corrections. Having a single standard footprint across multiple specialized receiver modules enables integrators to create multiple application-specific products based on a single design.

mosaic-HTM delivers orientation angles immediately from the start, helping initialize inertial systems that otherwise would require movement before they can measure 3D orientation. INS initialization with GNSS attitude from power-up allows machine trajectory path optimization and fully informed navigation of robotic systems immediately from mission start.

The mosaic-H receiver will be available for integrator testing and customer evaluation by end of December 2020. The full product production is expected by spring 2021.

Multi-Zone, direct Time-of-Flight modules speed scene comprehension efforts

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STMicroelectronics has extended its portfolio of FlightSense Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensors with the world’s first 64-zone device that breaks a scene into separate areas to help an imaging system build the most detailed spatial understanding of a scene.

This first-of-its-kind product comprises a 940nm Vertical Cavity Surface Emission Laser (VCSEL) light source, a System-on-Chip sensor integrating a VCSEL driver, the receiving array of Single Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPADs), and a low-power 32-bit MCU core and accelerator running sophisticated firmware. The VL53L5 retains the Class 1 certification of all ST’s FlightSense sensors and is fully eye-safe for consumer products.

Housed in a miniature module, the VL53L5 ToF sensor contains optical elements in the receive aperture that creates 64 ranging zones, unlocking a host of new features and use cases.

With a vertically integrated manufacturing model for its FlightSense sensors, ST builds its SPAD wafers on a 40nm proprietary silicon process in the Company’s state-of-the-art 12” wafer plant at Crolles, France before assembling all of the module components in ST’s back-end plants in Asia. This approach delivers exceptional quality and reliability to customers.

Customer development with the VL53L5 can build on ST’s strong relationships with a key smartphone and PC platform suppliers as ST has pre-integrated the sensor onto these platforms. Android and Windows device drivers are also widely available for FlightSense products. The VL53L5 is in mass production with millions of units already shipped to leading wireless and computer manufacturers.

mmWave radar sensors feature one-inch cube form factor

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D3 Engineering announced its DesignCore RS-6843AOP and RS-6843AOPU mmWave Radar Sensors. These miniature sensors enable the implementation of many different mmWave radar algorithms to measure, detect, and track. The production-intent sensors feature a 1-inch cube form factor, heat-spreading metal body, and mounting tabs. They may be used with a PC or embedded platform to facilitate field testing, sensing evaluation, algorithm development, and application demonstrations.

Industrial applications supported by these sensors include robotics, autonomous machines, industrial vehicle systems, and facility monitoring. Specific applications include driver monitoring, collision avoidance, and people counting and tracking. The sensors can also be used in many other use cases with a tethered host processor or stand-alone.

The sensors feature the TI IWR6843AOP, a single-chip 60-GHz industrial radar sensor integrating a DSP, an MCU, radar accelerator as well as an antenna array built right into the package. The IWR6843AOP RF front end integrates a PLL, three transmitters, four receivers, and a baseband ADC. It covers 60 GHz with bandwidths up to 4 GHz and features 12 dBm transmit power and noise figure 15 dB or better across the band. The processing cores in the IWR6843AOP include a C674x DSP for FMCW signal processing, a hardware accelerator for radar cube processing, and a Cortex-R4F microcontroller for object tracking, classification, and communications.

The RS-6843AOP features a header for connection to optional baseboards or hosts providing additional interfaces and functionality. Included on this interface are I2C, SPI, GPIO, and UART connections. On the other hand, the main interface of the RS-6843AOPU version is a USB-C connector which can act as a power supply input as well as enumerating two serial UARTS, one for console and the other for processed radar returns or other algorithm output.

The sensors include custom firmware ensuring board support for the latest version of the SDK from TI.

For additional specifications and drawings download the DesignCore RS-x843AOP/RS-x843AOPU mmWave Radar Sensor Datasheet

The DesignCore RS-6843AOPU mmWave Radar Sensor is $349 and is available for order.

Open-source software, hardware advances autonomous applications with GNSS

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Septentrio announces two important open-source resources for its GPS/GNSS module receivers. The first, ROSaic, is a ROS (Robot Operating System) driver for the mosaic-X5 module as well as other Septentrio GNSS receivers. The second project, mosaicHAT, is an open-source hardware reference design combining mosaic-X5 with a Raspberry Pi single-board computer. Both projects facilitate the integration of centimeter-level reliable positioning into robotic and other machine automation applications.

ROSaic driver operates on ROS, a widely-used programming environment within the industry as well as academics, commonly used for integrating robot technology and developing advanced robotics and autonomous systems. ROS allows data from numerous sensors to be combined allowing high levels of autonomy.

The mosaicHAT project facilitates accurate and reliable GNSS positioning for robotics and automation on a hardware level. Numerous engineers today use Raspberry Pi for prototyping and initial integrations. The mosaicHAT board is an easy way for integrators to get started with Septentrio’s mosaic-X5 GNSS module. By plugging mosaicHAT into a compatible Raspberry Pi, users have access to high-accuracy positioning with a high update rate, ideal for machine navigation and control. The small 56×65 mm board exposes basic interfaces such as USB, serial, and general-purpose communication pins. The reference design, footprint, and documentation are available for easy board printing or further customization.

2.3 Mp CMOS image sensor delivers image clarity at 120 fps

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ON Semiconductor has introduced the AR0234CS 2.3 Mp CMOS image sensor with global shutter technology. The high-performance sensor is designed for a variety of applications including machine vision cameras, AR/VR/MR headsets, autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), and barcode readers.

The AR0234CS captures 1080p video and single frames operating up to 120 frames per second (fps). With its industry-leading shutter efficiency, the 2.3 Mp sensor produces crisp and clear images by minimizing frame-to-frame distortion in high-speed scenes and reducing the motion artifacts other image sensors experience.

The AR0234CS sensor’s innovative pixel architecture delivers high dynamic range needed to support lighting conditions from the darkness of night to bright sunlight. The low noise and improved low-light response makes it suitable for applications spanning across consumer, commercial & industrial IoT, and the extended operating temperature range makes it deployable in challenging outdoor conditions.

Other advanced features of the AR0234CS include programmable regions of interest with on-chip histogram, auto exposure control, and 5 x 5 statistics engine, fully integrated strobe illumination control, a flexible row and column skip mode, along with horizontal and vertical mirroring, windowing, and pixel binning.

Together with the AP1302 Image Signal Processor (ISP), the AR0234CS delivers a comprehensive camera system that can be designed and developed quickly for fast time-to-market. Additionally, system designers can access the DevSuite software to evaluate features and capabilities, configure and tune the sensor, and provide a ready-made output that is usable for further image processing.

The AR0234CS is offered in color and mono variants, with 0° or 28° CRA. Samples and development hardware are available now through local ON Semiconductor sales support representatives and authorized distributors.

Suite of IP simplifies autonomous automotive and industrial automation designs

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Arm unveiled new computing solutions to accelerate autonomous decision-making with safety capability across automotive and industrial applications. The new suite of IP includes the Arm Cortex-A78AE CPU, Arm Mali-G78AE GPU, and Arm Mali-C71AE ISP, engineered to work together in combination with supporting software, tools, and system IP to enable silicon providers and OEMs to design for autonomous workloads. These products will be deployed in a range of applications, from enabling more intelligence and configurability in smart manufacturing to enhancing ADAS and digital cockpit applications in automotive.

The new Arm Cortex-A78AE CPU is Arm’s latest, highest performance safety capable CPU, offering the ability to run different, complex workloads for autonomous applications such as mobile robotics and driverless transportation. It delivers:

  • A 30% performance uplift compared to its predecessor.
  • Supports features to achieve the relevant automotive and industrial functional safety standards, ISO 26262 and IEC 61508 for applications up to ASIL D / SIL 3.
  • New enhanced Split Lock functionality (Hybrid Mode) to offer maximum flexibility. Hybrid Mode is designed to specifically enable applications that target lower levels of ASIL requirements without compromising performance and allow the deployment of the same SoC compute architecture into different domain controllers.

Mali is the number one shipping GPU worldwide, and the new Mali-G78AE is Arm’s first GPU to be designed for safety, delivering rich user experiences and heterogenous compute to safety-critical autonomous applications. The new Mali-G78AE enables:

  • A new approach to autonomous GPU workloads with Flexible Partitioning, with up to four fully independent partitions for workload separation for safety use cases.
  • GPU resources can now be utilized for safety-enabled human machine interfaces or for the heterogeneous compute needed in autonomous systems. For example, an infotainment system, an instrument cluster with ASIL B requirements, and a driver monitoring system can now all run concurrently and independently with hardware separation within an automotive application.

Autonomous workloads need to be aware of their surroundings, often through cameras that must operate in a wide range of lighting conditions. To support a broad range of vision applications across automotive and industrial, the Mali-C71AE offers:

  • The flexibility needed to support both human and machine vision applications such as production line monitoring and ADAS camera systems.
  • Enhanced safety features, supports features to achieve ASIL B / SIL2 safety capability.
  • Support for four real time cameras, or 16 buffered cameras, delivering a 1.2 giga pixel per second throughput.

As autonomous systems move towards more software-defined functionality, Arm is working to accelerate the development of software that will fully realize the benefits of these new technologies through initiatives such as Project Cassini, aimed at laying the foundation for the adoption of cloud native software paradigms across the entirety of edge computing. Arm is also working with multiple open source communities and specialist software vendors to widely enable the autonomous software ecosystem, adopting innovations from the established cloud native ecosystem, and collaboratively driving new development to support the features required for autonomous workloads.