Daily Archives: May 6, 2022

Its a playroom for Boston University students to operate robots on the groundand in the air. Its a brain space to research robots that think. Its a miniaturized city for road testing mini self-driving vehicles. Its an area to work on lifesaving, flexible medical robots that dont require motors or rigid parts.

BU undergraduates and masters students, heretofore largely shut out of the Universitys tight robotics laboratory space, will now be able to explore the robotics world at a new College of Engineering lab. The $8.8 million, 2,000-square-foot Robotics and Autonomous Systems Teaching and Innovation Center (RASTIC), to be sited in the former CVS building at 730 Commonwealth Ave., will open in summer 2023.

It will be funded 50-50 by the University and the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MassTech), a public agency supporting the states tech sector. Mike Kennealy, Massachusetts secretary of housing and economic development, announced the grant at a news conference May 4 at the BU Photonics Center, flanked by University and state leaders, including Robert A. Brown, president of BU, and Kenneth Lutchen, dean of ENG.

The new tools were investing in today, Kennealy said, will allow students to design and launch their own R&D projects, and for companies in the region, it will create a neutral space for research thats focused on robotics and autonomous solutions, and work with BU students and faculty to design, prototype, and test new devices. He said the lab will also host kindergarten-through-12th grade students in a tech scholars program.

This is really, really good work, and really important work, he said. This is a fabulous example of that work, and it really is critical to the future of our state in a lot of ways.We have to continue to be among the most innovative places in the world.

Brown called the lab a perfect illustration of what happens when this kind of force of imaginative leadership in academia and industry meet together with a state that has got the vision and foresight to support the kind of innovation that were doing. He quipped that Kennealy, who once worked in private equity, knows something about placing bets, which hes now doing today.

MassTech has awarded about 10 such grants among a field of 26 applicants, said Pat Larkin, director of MassTechs grant-making Innovation Institute. RASTIC clearly rose to the top, he said, andwe felt, scored on many of the metrics that are important to us.

With RASTIC, BU will more than quadruple its masters degree students in robotics, Larkin said, boosting Massachusetts competitiveness with rivals from Silicon Valley to China: We have a real appetite to address the talent challenges that exist in this state that are critical to the future of our tech and innovation economy.The number-one constraint in every emerging sector that we work with in Massachusetts is the human capital to build on the asset that exists.

The students that come out of BU RASTIC we anticipate being the actual innovators of the future, he said. They are going to gain an experience there thats going to inspire new ideas, new innovations, new opportunities for start-ups and new business formation in the state.

The commonwealth has a robust, globally significant robotics sector, Larkin added. And to build capabilities both on the technology side and on the talent side really feeds the flywheel in Massachusetts for robotics.

He said the expectation is that the team at BU will help take the robotics cluster in Massachusetts to the very next level.

Ioannis Paschalidis, an ENG Distinguished Professor of Engineering and of computing and data sciences, drafted the RASTIC proposal that won the grant with Sean Andersson, an ENG professor of mechanical and systems engineering. (Paschalidis directs BUs Center for Information and Systems Engineering, the organizational home of RASTIC.) A lot of robotics research takes place in EPIC, BUs Engineering Product Innovation Center, he says. But we have undergraduate students in electrical engineering and mechanical engineering, [and] there is no capacity there for them or for masters students.

In particular, Paschalidis says, ENGs masters program in robotics and autonomous systems, which has an experiential component, gets roughly 300 applications a year, but can select only about 20. We dont have the capacity to support many of these projects, he says. We need a place where the students can go in, can engage, industry can come in and be affiliated sponsors of specific projects that students at the masters and at the undergraduate level can do.

A student in that program, Nash Elder (ENG23), agrees. He works with folding robots inspired by origami, and having the means to fabricate hardware, access software backed by computing power, and collaborate with other students is an empowering resource, he said.I could see the space really as a central hub for the roboticists of BU.

BU will hire a professor to direct RASTIC, which will also have space for BU researchers with robotics grants to translate their ideas into practical applications. Among the areas researchers and students will test at the new lab, Paschalidis says, are these:

RASTIC builds on a long-standing collaboration between BU and the commonwealth, Larkin said, including the construction in Holyoke, with several other partners, of the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center.

Boston University has been a good partner to the state over many years, he said. The key personnel at BUthey understand the mission of the state. These investments are about growing the economy.Our university infrastructure really represents our comparative advantage as an economy globally.

We dont grow corn. We dont have oil. We have people.

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BU to Open New Robotics Lab to Foster More Innovators - Boston University

The optimization, integration, automation and management of material goods and data within the four walls of a warehouse or distribution center (DC), intralogistics has been getting a lot of attention lately due to the ongoing impacts of the pandemic, the growing labor shortage, the uptick in e-commerce orders and ever-evolving consumer preferences.

The exhibition hall at the recent Modex trade show, one of the leading materials handling events in the world, brought the current state of warehouse robotics and automation into clear focus, all under one roof. There, hundreds of vendors from all corners of the materials handling world were showcasing their innovations, most of which were in some wayeither directly or indirectlyrelated to automation and robotics.

Are you currently using or consideringother types of large-scale intralogisticsautomation like conveyors, sortation,storage/retrieval, or shuttle systems?

Source: Peerless Research Group

The long line of attendees waiting to get onto that floor each morning of the four-day event further proved just how hungry logistics operations are for equipment, software, devices and tools that help them get more done with less.

Once inside the exhibition hall, those attendees visited spacious booths outfitted with the newest warehouse robotics; watched robots effectively take on the heavy lifting involved with picking and packing orders; and saw how robotics developers and container manufacturers are collaborating to make combined solutions that work in perfect harmony.

What best describes your organizationsuse of robotic automation systemsand/or autonomous mobile robotsin your warehouses, distribution centers and/or manufacturing operations?

Source: Peerless Research Group

With the global robotics market on track to grow to $45.5 million this yearand with 80% of current fulfillment centers lacking any type of automationcompanies across all industries are experimenting with and implementing robotics in their warehouses, DCs and fulfillment centers. Supporting this trend is a vendor base thats optimizing advanced technology and using it to develop newer, better and more useful machines that meet their own customers needs.

Mobility underpins increased robotics usefulness, as contemporary robots are equipped with sensors such as light detection and ranging [Lidar] sensors and computer vision to help them autonomously navigate their environments, PitchBook, a capital market company, points out in its recent robotics report. This new ability, combined with labor shortages, geopolitical concerns, and productivity-obsessed shareholders, has many companies looking to robots to accelerate their business competitiveness.

What is the current state of yourorganizations pursuit of robots systemsin your warehouse or DCs?

Source: Peerless Research Group

To learn more about current and future intralogistics robotics and automation implementation trendsincluding readiness for adoption, barriers to adoption, and the key criteria shippers are using when buying such equipmentPeerless Research Group (PRG) recently conducted its new Intralogistics Robotics Study in March of 2022. Heres what we learned.

Which of the following use cases would beyour top 3 priorities for using robots today?

Source: Peerless Research Group

More than 300Logistics ManagementandModern Materials Handlingreaders provided input for the online survey, which was largely focused on the current state of robotics automation adoption and use cases.

Responsible for hiring, interviewing or sourcing full-time or part-time labor to manage materials handling, distribution and fulfillment, the survey respondents work in manufacturing (41.8%); transportation and warehousing services (15.3%); wholesale trade (10.2%); and retail trade (8.2%) industries.

The key industry sectors represented for this survey include fabricated metals, industrial machinery, and plastics andrubber. The majority of companies (38.8%) have annual revenues of less than $50 million, while 11.2% have somewhere between $100 million to $249.9 million in revenues and another 9.2% reported revenues of $2.5 billion or more.

What is your preferred commercial modelfor your planned robotics initiatives?

Source: Peerless Research Group

Many companies are just beginning their warehouse robotics journeys, according to the survey. In fact, we found that 40.4% have yet to install any robotic automation systems or services. About 34% of respondents consider themselves potential buyers or current users of these solutions, while 15.2% provide robotic automation consulting and systems integration services and 7.3% sell robotic automation systems or services.

Currently, 37% of companies are using large-scale intralogistics automation (e.g., conveyors, sortation, storage/retrieval, or shuttle systems) in their operations, and 23.1% are using robots in their plants or warehouses. Just over half of the responding organizations (52.8%) are not using this type of equipment, but 21.3% plan to put it to use within the next three years.

How important are the following business case factorswhen you are choosing your robotics solutions?

Source: Peerless Research Group

About 40% of survey respondents still say that they have no plans to use robots at this time.

When asked for their top reasons fornotinvesting in robotics, respondents said they were going to focus their time and investments in warehousing and storage; order customization; inventory management; and individual pick, pack and ship. Other obstacles include a lack of management support, too many variables in products, space and cost constraints and inventory fluctuations.

What is the current state of your organizations pursuitof robots in your warehouse or DCs?

Source: Peerless Research Group

Of the survey respondents who plan to use robots, but dont currently have them in place, 38% of respondents are in the education and knowledge gathering stage; 22% are in the strategy and vision formulation stage; and 12% plan to roll out additional robots based on previous, successful tests. Other respondents are conducting an impact analysis (8%), documenting requirements (4%), piloting (2%), or already implementing robots in the liveproduction environment (2%).

The companies that are implementing robotics and automation are focused on increasing flow and throughput, better managing the labor crisis, improving current labor productivity, reducing labor costs, improving workplace safety, reducing injuries and improving order accuracy and quality.

When selecting and implementing advanced robotics automation to fulfill those needs, most companies turn to material handling suppliers, robotics vendors, industry peers or systems integrators for help.

According to respondents who are planning to implement robotics automation, their top priorities for using such technology include picking (42.9%), goods receiving and unloading (42.9%) and sorting (37.5%). About 43% of companies are considering AMR pallet movement equipment while 34% want autonomous retrieval-to-person/put-wall robots, and 30.2% are evaluating robotic picking systems.

Which use cases are you addressing with robots today?

Source: Peerless Research Group

Around 28% of respondents want to incorporate heavy payload forked/tugger transport robots into their operations, while 24.5% and 22.6% want sortation robots or stationary industrial robots, respectively. Other types of automated equipment that are currently on logistics operations radar screens include heavy payload carry-on-top transport robots, case/tote transport robots, collaborative in-aisle picking robots and cleaning robots.

When choosing a robotics solution, 48% of companies say ROI is extremely important to their decision making, while 40% see payback time as extremely important and 38% point to total cost of ownership as a key aspect of their decision-making process. Additionally, 28% consider time to value when choosing a solution, and 26% consider investment risk extremely important.

Of those companies planning to implement a robotics solution, 32% have yet to secure the funding for these projects, but are working on it, while 24% do have the funding in place. About 10% of respondents say that pre-funding is unnecessary because they plan to use robots as a service (RaaS) and another 2% say they plan to funnel funds from other projects into their robotics and automation initiatives.

Nearly half of the survey respondents who are planning to use robotics would prefer to buy the entire robotic solution (i.e., a pure Capex investment); 24% say they would rather use the RaaS option; and 22% say they would prefer to buy the robot hardware but subscribe to the software via a hybrid approach.

When investing in robotics solutions, more than half of respondents (53.8%) say payback is an extremely important factor in the decision, while an equal number consider return on investment (ROI) when making these decisions. Others point to time to value (38.5%), total cost of ownership (38.5%), and investment risk (30.8%) as some of the most important considerations when investing in robotics and automation.

Robots are living up to expectations in the real-world applications where theyre being put to work. Asked whether their existing robotics installations lived up to early expectations, over 60% of companies say their total-cost-of-ownership objectives were either met or exceeded. Nearly 85% of respondents say that the projected ROI either met or exceeded their expectations, and almost 77% say the same about their payback time objectives.

Overall, the majority of companies are satisfied with their robotics and automation investments, with 69.2% of them reportedly achieving their overall business goals from their robotics implementations, 23.1% saying theyve yet to achieve those goals and 7.7% unsure of the answer to that question.

Did you achieve your overall business goalsfrom your robotics investment?

Source: Peerless Research Group

Organizations are enthusiastic about future use cases for robotic automation. Nearly all of those with robotics systems currently in place say they have plans for future projects, while 46.2% say theyre already in the middle of new projects. Just over 46% will pursue new use cases over the next two years (with the planning process already underway), while 7.7% have no plans to implement robotics in their intralogistics operations.

When planning out future robotics projects, about 77% of respondents say picking is their top priority, while 46.2% point to sorting, 38.5% to case/tote transport, and 30.8% to replenishment as their key priorities. Other companies want to add more robotics into their goods receiving and unloading processes (30.8%); put-away into storage automation (15.4%); packing (7.7%); and order consolidation (7.7%).

Looking ahead, 61.5% of survey respondents will likely consider mobile goods-to-person systems within the next two to five years, while 53.8% point to robotic picking systems and 46.2% to sortation robots as their key future priorities. About 39% of respondents have set their sights on autonomous retrieval-to-person/put-wall robots, 30.8% want stationary industrial robots and 30.8% will be considering heavy payload carry-on-top transport robots.

Link:

2022 Robotics Survey: The logistics robots have arrived - Logistics Management

University Liggett School senior Cooper Ondersma gets a heros welcome as he steps off the bus. Ondersma has been on the robotics team for seven years starting in middle school and capped off his senior year with the world championship win.

As the Knight Vision robotics team members exit the bus April 24, they are presented with congratulatory flowers and cheers from their family and friends.

Photo by Patricia OBlenes

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GROSSE POINTE WOODS Squaring off against teams from countries as far away as Israel, China and Turkey, University Liggett School students on Knight Vision Team 3175 emerged triumphant at the FIRST Robotics Competition April 23 in Houston, taking top honors in the international contest.

The students returned from the airport by bus April 24 to flowers and cheers as family and friends welcomed them back.

In an email interview, Kimberlee Galea a Liggett Upper School science teacher and FIRSTRoboticsCompetition head coach/roboticscoordinator said more than 450 teams from across the United States and the globe took part in this competition.

Liggett sophomore Isabella Haladjian, 15, of Grosse Pointe Shores, said in an email interview that she was shocked when she learned her team had won the championship.

Just a week before, we were waiting for results from the state championship to find out if we qualified or not for the world championship, so it was a huge surprise to make it this far, Haladjian said. Playing with so many other teams at such a high level was an incredible experience thatwe will never forget, andwe are so grateful to have been able to attend.

Its an exciting first for the school. Galea said this was the first time Liggett has won the world championship and the first time its team qualified for the event based on points. She said teams in 2015 and 2018 attended the championships, but they did so through a lottery/waitlist invitation.

Each year, competitors are asked to create a robot that can complete specific jobs.

Our task this year is to drive around a field and shoot oversized tennis balls into an 8-foot-tall goal that is4-feet in diameter, Haladjian said. In the last 30 seconds of the match, our robot has to traverse across a set of monkey bars to reach the highest bar and earn points.

Galea said the Knight Visions design allowed them to reduce their cycle times and store more cargo.

The simplicity of our robots design was the most surprising feature, Galea said. There are very few components that required maintenance throughout the season. We only had one electrical failure all season, and that occurred while we were at the World Championship. Because of the simplicity of the robot, the kids were able to easily identify the source of the problem and fix it before the next match. The double-wide shooter was probably the most unique aspect of our robot, and we had several students and mentors from the other teams at our event stopping by our pits to check out that design.

Haladjian said making sure their robot was reliable was important, so that they could complete their tasks with speed and consistency.

Haladjian has been on the robotics team since she was in seventh grade; she said she joined the high school team when she was in eighth grade. Shes the teams programmer.

I was always interested in programming since I was in middle school, and whenI heard about the team, I thought it would be a cool opportunity tolearn more about technology andSTEM, Haladjian said.

Cooper Ondersma, 18, a senior from Grosse Pointe Woods, said in an email interview that hes been part of robotics teams at Liggett for the last seven years, starting with the middle school team.

I always liked making things and taking things apart, Ondersma said. Also, I had an interestin technology in general always wanted to know how it worked.

Ondersma said robotics enabled him to discover that he has a passion for engineering, and he plans on studying either mechanical or aerospace engineering in college as he prepares for a career in the aerospace industry.

I most enjoyed learning how real engineering is done and having the chance to do it myself, Ondersma said of being on the robotics team. I loved learning all the skills that it takes to be an effective engineer.

Similarly, Haladjian said her experience on the robotics team has allowed her to discover her interest in STEM fields. While she hasnt decided on a career, she said she might go into computer science or another subdivision of engineering.

The robotics team experience also teaches students an array of other skills, including leadership, teamwork and communication, Ondersma said.

Students learn a wide variety of skills from being on aroboticsteam, Galea said. Depending on the role each student chooses to take on, they can learn computer aided design (CAD), how to use power tools to fabricate parts, strategic design, coding, how to set up a pneumatics system, electrical wiring, presentation skills, data analysis, budgeting, fundraising and of course teamwork. One of my favorite parts of FIRSTRoboticsis the emphasis on cooperation/gracious professionalism, which encourages everyone to help everyone.

The Knight Vision team also consists of seniors Noah Sanders, Tommy Mulder, Ella Harvey, Taveon Colston and Rose Jewell; junior Erica Hayes; sophomores Maddie Updike, Jacob Sanders, Nate Caudill, Eric Ford, Jermaine Calloway, Luke Yoshida, Raiven Mitchell, Desirai Mitchell, Christina Howard, Summer Doris, Jessica McDonald, Joss Harvey, Jake Juip, Leo Zeng, Felix Swanson and Robert Chen; and freshmen Max Goerlich, Matthew Nicholson and Claire Juip.

We have numerous adult mentors who help make this team successful, Galea said. This team would not be what it is without their commitment of time and talent that help these kids maximize their learning through the program. These mentors are parents of current team members, parents of team alumni, alumni of the team, other Liggett faculty, as well as employees from our sponsors. We are forever grateful to all of our sponsors who help make this life-changing program possible. Additionally, I would like to thank every team who has ever helped us over the past 13 years. They have taught us through their example, helped us resolve technical problems, assisted us with outreach, encouraged us, and celebrated our successes. FIRST truly is more than robots.

The students also thanked their mentors and coach for all of their help and hard work.

It takes a lot of time and effort, but students said being on the robotics team is enjoyable.

My favorite part of being on theroboticsteam is going to competitions, working with other teams and playing in matches, Haladjian said. The energy at competitions is unparalleled, and it is always a lot of fun to see the robots that other teams have built.

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Liggetts Knights conquer the robotics world - C&G Newspapers

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Students learn basics of robotics | Jackson Star and Herald - Ripley and Ravenswood | wvnews.com - WV News

NuVasive's Pulse integrated spine surgery system was a key growth driver in the first quarter and has been used in more than 500 commercial cases, the company said in its first-quarter earnings call May 4, according to Seeking Alpha.

Six notes:

1. NuVasive said it will continue to invest in the Pulse platform, Pulse robotics and its core spine portfolio. Its goal for Pulse is to have it be used in 100 percent of spine cases. NuVasive said it is developing financial models that will benefit the company and its customers.

2. The company continues to invest in robotics research and development to execute on its Pulse robotics roadmap, but it has "not yet submitted for regulatory approval and thus, we will not complete first in-human this year," CEO Chris Barry said.

3. Though the robotics application has been delayed, the company expects Pulse robotics to be a key application for the platform and will provide updates on upcoming milestones later.

4. NuVasive has also collaborated with Siemens Healthineers to integrate the Pulse platform with the Cios Spin mobile C-arm, "a leading intraoperative 2D and 3D imaging solution," according to the company.

5. Mr. Barry said NuVasive has also invested in data and analytics and preoperative surgical planning strategies to support the development of new applications for the Pulse system.

6. The device is a single unit of capital equipment that incorporates two fixed screens, wireless device connectivity and several software technologies. Pulse's reduced footprint in the operating room provides increased efficiency for surgeons and staff, according to NuVasive.

Excerpt from:

NuVasive's Pulse surpasses 500 cases; robotics will be a 'key application' - Becker's Orthopedic & Spine

CLARKSTON - The local ECH Science Underwater Robotics team has once again qualified for the International Seaperch Challenge! The team, which is currently made up of three members (Ella, Claire and Merredy), will now be headed to the University of Maryland on June 4, 2022 to compete against approximately 150 other teams.

This is the second year in a row that the ECH Science Team has qualified for the International Seaperch Challenge. Last year, the then three-person team of Ella, Claire and Hannah took 3rd place in the pool event.

While the cross-country trip to compete is fun and a great opportunity, the team does have to pay their own way.

The cost to participate in the 2022 event for the seven-member group (3 team members, 3 parents/chaperones, and the coach) is estimated to be close to $11,300. That cost covers registration, airfare, lodging, and a rough estimate for local transportation. Public transportation, Uber, and taxis will be used.

As of this writing, it is estimated that the team has raised $2,800.

Tax-deductible donations can be sent to the Friends of Asotin Lions Club, PO B 175, Asotin, WA 99402; with the memo indicating it's for the ECH-Science Team. The team says any donation will be appreciated!

The ECH Science Team is comprised of middle school girls that come together from different schools and are interested in sharing their love for science, technology, engineering, and math. The name is derived from the initials of the co-founding members Ella, Claire and Hannah.

To learn more about the ECH Science Team, click HERE.

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Local Youth Underwater Robotics Team Qualifies for 2022 International Seaperch Challenge, Seeking Donations to Help Cover Travel Expenses -...

NVIDIA Orion Robot Assistant Powered By Jetson AGX Orin

Whether you have a Roomba vacuum scouring your home for dirt and debris, or youre fortunate enough to have experienced some level of autonomous driving, most folks realize that advanced robotics applications rely on intelligent machine vision to navigate terrain and avoid collisions. However, truly intelligent robots of the future will need not only eyes to see and navigate, but intelligence to interact, communicate and make decisions on their own as well. With pre-trained models and even live training, many robots of the future will need to infer and ingest important information from the world around them, interact seamlessly with humans and also make the right decisions and recommendations autonomously. This area of intelligent machines is a huge market opportunity that NVIDIA has been developing a myriad of solutions for with its Jetson portfolio for years now.

NVIDIA Jetson Models Since 2014

From the petite, $59 Jetson Nano developer kit for makers (2019), to its latest full-powered Jetson AGX Orin developer kit that retails for $1999, and is a derivative of the companys Drive AGX Orin for autonomous vehicles, NVIDIA has been keenly focused on not only developing the silicon engines that can power the next generation of autonomous machines and intelligent edge devices, but also a full software stack and deployment platform for developers to harness.

NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin Developer Kit

NVIDIAs Jetson AGX Orin is available in both a developer kit with 32GB of LPDDR5 memory on board, as well as a family of modules for various embedded applications. My team got some hands-on time with the dev kit, and the brains of the operation is NVIDIAs Jetson AGX Orin processor in its full fat implementation, with a 12-core Arm Cortex-A78AE 64-bit CPU complex that rides shotgun alongside an NVIDIA Ampere GPU that sports 2,048 CUDA cores and 64 Tensor cores. Think GeForce RTX 3050-class performance, but tapped here for machine learning, specifically inferencing workloads but with some training capabilities as well, which Ill cover in a bit.

The top-end config of Jetson AGX Orin offers 275 TOPS (Trillion Operations Per Second) of computing power, though Orin boards can scale from 15 - 60 Watts, to address power requirements of various low power edge applications. The dev kit brings out tons of extra IO for access and adaptability as well, including the usual JTAG port and 40-pin GPIO (general purpose IO) header, additional headers for sensors, and enough USB ports to connect not only cameras and mics, but peripherals and external storage. If that weren't enough, there's 10-Gigabit Ethernet port and a pair of PCI Express slots too. In a nutshell, NVIDIAs Jetson AGX Orin developer kit is designed to provide unfettered access to as many features and capabilities of the platform as possible.

NVIDIA Jetson Software Stack For Various Applications

NVIDIA bundles Jetson AGX Orin with Ubuntu Linux and its Jetson Jetpack SDK. Jetpack is NVIDIAs development environment. Jetpack works in conjunction with NVIDIA ROS (real-time operating system), pre-trained models and various other SDKs and libraries in support of a myriad of applications like machine vision, real-time speech and analytics. In short, the Jetson Software tools suite is designed to let engineers and developers in a myriad of disciplines, from robotics to industrial automation, the IoT and more, program and develop in their native languages while optimizing on and targeting the Jetson platform. To give you a sense of what can be done with these tools and Jetson AGX Orin, Ben Funk over at HotHardware was able to quickly harness NVIDIAs Riva AI speech SDK for a fun real-time demo. Check it out...

As you can see, NVIDIAs Riva AI speech recognition engine has no problem keeping up with Bens cadence, understanding his pauses and minor corrections and ultimately understanding conversational context for better accuracy. Couple Riva Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) with conversational AI and youve got a chatbot that you can personify with additional NVIDIA tools and SDKs, like the company itself did in this demo...

NVIDIAs Orion bot is fully powered by Jetson AGX Orin and demonstrates machine vision and location awareness for its navigation, conversational AI, recommendation AI and speech recognition. NVIDIA Omniverse Avatar then brings all of these technologies together for a cute and useful roving digital building assistant, again, all powered by Jetson AGX Orin.

Beyond just the trained vision models that NVIDIA provides for Jetson AGX Orin, the company also provides its TAO (Train, Adapt, Optimize) toolkit that affords developers easy access to adapt models to their own applications and build additional functionality locally, or deploy models on NVIDIAs DeepStream SDK in the cloud. DeepStream can run on NVIDIA A100-powered data center servers, on Microsoft Azure Cloud infrastructure, for a major lift in performance and compute resources, though it can also run locally on prem and at the edge on Jetson itself.

As a technology analyst, for me the key take-away here is that NVIDIAs Jetson AGX Orin dev kit is a powerful tool suite of silicon engines and software for robotics, autonomous machines and other AI edge IoT (Internet of Things) devices. However, the GPU giant has taken the approach of enabling a full platform solution, with trained models, the ability to adapt and continually train them, as well as SDKs for machine vision, speech, conversational AI and more, along with the ability to deploy and refine locally or in the cloud.

NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin Production Modules And 1Ku Pricing

I believe this true platform solution approach is the only way to really do AI or any type of adaptable computing solution right. Competitive solutions like FPGA-based platforms from Xilinx (AMD) take similar wholistic approaches, but NVIDIA has a significant jump in this market, having pioneered AI acceleration and development on GPUs for well over a decade now when its CUDA programming language was first introduced way back in 2007.

NVIDIA is currently offering Jetson AGX Orin developer kits for $1999 via its network of distributors. Various configurations of Jetson AGX Orin production modules above will start shipping in July, with lower cost Jetson Orin NX modules shipping in September. However, Id expect NVIDIA distributor partners are already lighting-up more than a few orders for these early Jetson AGX Orin dev kits.

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Experiencing NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin: The Fascinating Future Of AI-Empowered Robotics - Forbes