MCUs supports communication protocol for Robot Operating System

Renesas Electronics Corporation is accelerating the development of robotics systems to deliver intelligence at the industrial endpoint by extending the features of Renesas’ high-performance, 32-bit RX65N Series of microcontrollers (MCUs) to support the DDS-XRCE (Data-Distribution Service for Extremely Resource Constrained Environments), one of the upcoming protocol standards for ROS 2 communication. Renesas’ support of the DDS-XRCE framework enables the development of software that controls the sensors and actuators that will be embedded at robotics system endpoints, such as welfare, safeguard, reception, cleaning, household robots, and other robotics endpoints.

The Robot Operating System (ROS) is a key framework that provides libraries and tools that enable developers to bring new innovations to the robotics community. There has been new interest in extending ROS access to embedded MCUs, which accelerates the development of service robots. The development of the ROS 2 addresses these needs. 

Renesas implemented an eProsima Micro XRCE-DDS client on an RX65N MCU. Employing two RX65N MCU-based boards – one as a sensor operating as the eyes and nose of a robot, and one as an actuator operating as the robot’s hands and legs – Renesas has verified the successful control and communication of these devices using the DDS-XRCE. All software used in this demonstration will be open sourced and be available in Q4 2018.

Renesas is a gold sponsor of ROSCon JP 2018, which was held in Tokyo on September 14^th, 2018 and a bronze sponsor of ROSCon 2018 held in Madrid on September 29^th and 30^th, 2018, and proactively supports ROS community.