Robots are born to replace humans in highly repetitive and dangerous tasks, allowing humans to have time to engage in more intelligent and innovative work. To this end, practitioners in the robotics industry have worked hard to launch a wide variety of scene robots, which has brought rapid development of the industry, and China has become the largest robot market in the world.
But at the same time, what we cannot avoid is that the robot industry generally has pain points such as low development efficiency, long iteration cycle, difficult technology implementation, mismatch between R&D costs and product value, and repeated "wheel-making" phenomena. Among them, how to improve the efficiency of robot development and reduce the difficulty of development has become one of the obstacles to the breakthrough development of the robot industry.
As the company that launched the first domestic software and hardware integration, open and easy-to-use robot development platform, Horizon released another big move on July 25. At the "Horizon 2023 Robot Developer Creation and Sharing Day" held in Shenzhen, it launched the "RDK A series of robot developer kits + robot operating system TogetheROS.Bot™ version 2.0 + application center "NodeHub" family bucket, as well as corresponding developer ecological promotion measures, further and comprehensively lower the threshold for robot development.
In this regard, Wang Cong, general manager of the Horizon Robotics Division, summed up the three core elements of the innovation of intelligent robots: "In the future, whether it is leading to a dedicated robot or a general-purpose robot, Horizon is willing to be the bottom enabler of the robot era, and the future of robots It is inseparable from a good hardware platform, a good development platform, and more importantly, a group of developers who are passionate about robots."
Wang Cong, General Manager of Horizon Robotics Division
Robot development family bucket, one-stop solution to the whole process from development to application
As an industry-leading provider of intelligent computing solutions, Horizon relies on the core chip hardware foundation, prosperous software platform, and open developer ecology, aiming to build an industry intelligent base for the development of robots and drive the acceleration of intelligent evolution.
The "RDK series robot developer kit + robot operating system TogetheROS.Bot™ version 2.0 + application center NodeHub" released by Hu Chunxu, the head of the ecosystem of the Horizon Robotics Business Unit on the Creation and Sharing Day, can be said to have created a new paradigm for robot development, allowing robot development simpler.
Hu Chunxu, Head of Ecology, Horizon Robotics Division
RDK series robot development kits (Horizon Robotics Developer Kits) are robot developer kits based on Horizon smart chips, including RDK X3, RDK X3 Module, RDK Ultra, etc., which can help developers quickly build robot prototypes, develop robot products, and develop Evaluation and verification work.
Among them, RDK X3 (Horizon Robotics Developer Kit X3) is a robot developer kit with 5Tops inference computing power, which can process multiple MIPI camera inputs at the same time, and supports H.264/H.265 encoding and decoding capabilities up to 4K 60 frames. 2.4G/5G wireless network, the interface is compatible with Raspberry Pi series development boards. The series is currently updated to version V2.0.
RDK Ultra (Horizon Robotics Developer Kit Ultra) is a robot developer kit, with 96Tops end-side reasoning computing power and 8-core CPU processing power, can simultaneously process 4 MIPI camera inputs and support H.265 encoding and decoding capabilities up to 4K 60 frames .
TogethertheROS.Bot is a robot operating system launched by Horizon Robotics for robot manufacturers and ecological developers. Based on this system, ecological developers and commercial customers can develop robots efficiently and conveniently, and create competitive intelligent robot products. This time the system has been updated to version 2.0.
NodeHub, the application center of the horizon robot development platform , debuted for the first time. It integrates a large number of related application nodes of intelligent robots, which can realize rapid installation and deployment. It's as easy as building blocks."
Horizon robot development platform application center NodeHub
A good horse with a good saddle is indispensable
Thanks to the technical advantages of combining software and hardware, an open and easy-to-use development environment, and flexible and efficient service support, many developers, such as enterprises, universities, and individuals, have launched a wide variety of robot products and technologies with significant competitiveness based on the horizon robot ecosystem. .
On the one hand, Horizon has established in-depth cooperative relations with many leading brands, empowering and accelerating the mass production of various smart machines. For example, Cobos, the largest R&D manufacturer of service robots in China, launched the industry's first sweeping robot equipped with an intelligent dedicated processor based on the Horizon Rising Sun®3 chip; Momoto Technology, a leader in the field of robot joints, built a new robot based on the Horizon Rising Sun® X3 pie The first domestic intelligent wheeled robot development platform.
On the other hand, relying on the Horizon robot platform, Horizon has also created a variety of developer products including smart cars, quadruped dogs, robotic arms, and even humanoid robots with many partners. Among them, representative products of 25 partners were displayed and interacted at the "Robot Open Market" on the Creative Sharing Day.
Robot Open Bazaar
In addition, college students, as the future of the robot industry, are crucial to their cultivation. It is reported that Horizon has launched the Horizon DUP University Developer Program (Horizon Developer University Program) for colleges and universities across the country. Through school-enterprise courses, scientific research competitions, etc. and the robot development kit provided by Horizon, it will promote general education in robotics in colleges and universities and cultivate colleges and universities. The innovative practice of researchers empowers the integrated development of intelligent robots in industry, education and research. At present, Horizon has reached cooperation with more than ten universities including Nanjing University, Shaanxi University of Science and Technology, East China Normal University, Zhejiang University, and Shenzhen University.
It is understood that Horizon has served a total of 20,000 developers, helped more than 50 small and medium-sized maker companies, covering more than 10 types of robots, and the shipment of Rising Sun series chips has reached more than 4 million pieces. This "Horizon 2023 Robot Developer Creation and Sharing Day" is a new starting point, bringing new tools, new ecology, and new plans for the sustainable iteration of the robot industry, and will write a strong stroke for the development of the robot industry.