News

Robotics Development Platform for Consumer, Enterprise and Industrial Designs

March 04, 2019 by Paul Shepard

TDK Corporation is working with Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. through its group company, InvenSense, to contribute a product portfolio of MEMS motion and audio sensor solutions to the new Qualcomm Robotics RB3 Platform. Based on the Qualcomm® SDA/SDM845 system-on-chip (SoC), the Qualcomm Robotics RB3 platform is a comprehensive, highly optimized set of hardware, software and tools designed to help manufacturers and developers create advanced consumer, enterprise and industrial robotics products.

Comprised of a comprehensive set of hardware, software, and development tools, the Qualcomm Robotics RB3 platform is designed to help manufacturers and developers create robotic products, ranging from large industrial and enterprise robots to small battery-operated ones with challenging power and thermal dissipation requirements.

TDK's InvenSense ICM-42688 motion sensor eliminates critical sensor fusion timing errors, ensuring highly accurate timing of the sensor outputs relative to the clock domain of the new Qualcomm Robotics RB3 platform's fusion engine in the sensor hub.

These specialized sensors are a part of the new Qualcomm Robotics RB3 Platform from Qualcomm which offers a highly optimized set of hardware, software and tools designed to help manufacturers and developers create advanced consumer, enterprise and industrial robotics products.

The platform also supports 6-axis inertial measurement unit (IMU 3-axis gyroscope and 3-axis accelerometer), capacitive barometric pressure sensor, multi-mode digital microphones, and additional ports for supplementary sensors from TDK-InvenSense, for example, ultrasonic time-of-flight or gas sensors.

The Qualcomm Robotics RB3 platform can integrate InvenSense's 6-axis IMUs (3-axis gyroscope and 3-axis accelerometer), capacitive barometric pressure sensor, and multi-mode digital microphones. The Qualcomm Robotics RB3 Platform also integrates two InvenSense IMU sensors able to quantify external real-time clock measurements to provide a high degree of precision, and includes support for ultra-low noise, industry leading relative accuracy pressure sensor capable of measuring 10 cm of elevation difference.

The RB3 platform also integrates InvenSense microphones which bring both high SNR and high AOP. Multi-mode microphones are ideal in ‘AlwaysOn' robotic applications where low power, high fidelity, tight sensitivity matching and high acoustic overload point (AOP) are important.

The development kit includes tools to add the following to your robotics development:

  • Object Tracking, Detection and Classification
  • Object Depth and Avoidance
  • Face detection and Recognition
  • Scene Classification and understanding
  • Gesture and Hand Tracking
  • Voice activation and audio classification
  • vSLAM (Visual Localization and Mapping)
  • Path Planning and 3D map formation
  • Obstacle avoidance.
  • Deep learning

The comprehensive hardware development kit has the following features:

  • A robotics-focused DragonBoard™ 845c development board, based on the Qualcomm® SDA 845 SoC and compliant with the 96Boards open hardware specification
  • Support for Linux and ROS
  • Qualcomm® Neural Processing SDK
  • Qualcomm® Computer Vision SDK
  • Robot Operating System (ROS) package

"The Qualcomm Robotics RB3 Platform provides a new platform for the development of innovative new robotics products," said Dev Singh, director of business development and head of autonomous robotics, drones and intelligent machines at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "The platform takes full advantage of InvenSense's high-performance sensors - sensors that are important for many applications in robotics, from industrial robots to enterprise service bots to personal consumer products. A development kit based on the Qualcomm Robotics RB3 Platform is available for purchase now from Thundercomm."

"TDK provides many of the best motion and audio sensors available on the market today, and their inclusion in the Qualcomm Robotics RB3 platform will reduce the barrier-to-entry for consumer, enterprise, and industrial robot makers, while maximizing their opportunities to innovate with a wide range of sensor solutions enabling quick design and development of smart effective solutions," said Nicolas Sauvage, Senior Director, Ecosystem at TDK-InvenSense. "Contributing high-performance sensors to the next wave of robotics innovations on Qualcomm Robotics RB3 platform showcases TDK-InvenSense's commitment to new developing market segments."