To jointly build a prosperous robot ecosystem, Horizon launches China's first open and easy-to-use robot development platform that integrates software and hardware

On June 14, 2022, Horizon, the global leader in edge artificial intelligence computing platforms, held an online conference for the "Hello Hobot" Horizon robot development platform, launching China's first open and easy-to-use robot development platform that integrates software and hardware - Horizon Hobot Platform. Aiming at the pain points of robot development, we provide developers with a complete set of robot development services from underlying computing, development tools, to algorithm cases, effectively improving robot development efficiency and promoting industry development and industry prosperity.

Dr. Yu Kai, founder and chief scientist of Horizon, announced at the press conference: "Horizon established the AIoT & General Robot Division and launched the Horizon Hobot Platform to provide open source, open software and hardware collaboration for a wide range of robot developers. The system solution conforms to the development trend of the robot industry. We hope to unite a wide range of industry partners to jointly create a bright future for a prosperous robot ecosystem."

Dr. Yu Kai said: "Horizon has been adhering to the principle of The mission of 'empowering machines to make human life safer and better' aims to continuously deepen the field of artificial intelligence so that every vehicle and every appliance has the capabilities of environmental perception, human-computer interaction and decision-making control, thereby realizing Everything is intelligent."

Dr. Yu Kai, founder and chief scientist of Horizon

As the only company in China that has achieved mass production of automotive-grade automotive smart chips, , Horizon automotive chip journey series shipments have exceeded 1 million pieces, and so far, it has obtained pre-installation appointments for more than 70 models. Facing the field of robots, Horizon hopes to provide a development platform for robots, not just chips, but also complete software and hardware systems. Based on chip capabilities, combined with Horizon software, algorithms, especially the advantages of deep learning, it provides developers with comprehensive development guarantees.

Hitting the pain points of the industry, the robot development platform liberates productivity

In recent years, thanks to the development of deep learning algorithms and AI chip computing power, the robot industry has entered into a booming development However, at the development level, there are still problems such as low development efficiency, difficulty in technology implementation, and mismatch between R&D costs and product value. Horizon believes that the reason why the above problems persist is largely due to the current situation of "fighting independently" between software and hardware manufacturers, which prevents the formation of a complete system, the integration of software and hardware, and efficient collaboration with deep optimization.

Wang Cong, general manager of Horizon AIOT & Universal Robots Division, said: "As the complexity of composite robots increases, the requirements for device selection, software systems, data iteration, etc. will also be higher. Breaking the 'respective To combat the situation, co-building a development ecosystem on an infrastructure-level platform is the only way for the industry to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and release productivity."

## Horizon AIOT & General Robot Division General Manager Wang Cong

This is also an important reason why Horizon established the AIoT & General Robot Division and launched the Horizon Robot Development Platform. As the only open and easy-to-use robot development platform in China that integrates software and hardware, Horizon Hobot Platform consists of a chip (Horizon Rising Sun®), a robot operating system (Horizon TogetherROS™), robot reference algorithms (Boxes), and robot application examples (Apps). , supporting development tools (Tools), a complete set of robot development services including underlying computing, development tools, and algorithm cases, providing a new infrastructure for empowering robot developers and improving robot development efficiency.

Horizon Robot Development Platform——Horizon Hobot Platform

Among them, Horizon Rising Sun® series chips build a high-performance, low-cost solution for the Horizon Hobot Platform. The cornerstone of computing power is power consumption. At present, the cumulative shipment volume of Rising Sun® chips has exceeded 1 million pieces, and has achieved large-scale mass production in the fields of intelligent robots, intelligent large screens, smart homes, etc., and is widely used in the products of partners such as Ecovacs, Xiaodu, and TCL. on multiple products. The next-generation chip Rising Sun® 5 is planned to be launched next year. It will integrate Horizon's most advanced Bayesian architecture AI engine (BPU®), with stronger CPU and BPU performance, richer user interfaces, and efficiently empower robot development and products. Optimize and make machines smarter.

Reaching "software and hardware integration" with Rising Sun® chips, Horizon TogetherROS™ achieves the ultimate optimization of performance. Tuning starting from the chip instruction set has significantly improved the data communication performance of TogetherROS™ - compared with ROS2, the most popular robot operating system in the industry, the communication delay and CPU usage of TogetherROS™ in both unit tests and scenario tests have been significantly improved. are significantly reduced and very stable. In addition, using the chip hardware acceleration unit, the performance of some CV (computer vision) operators has also been greatly improved. Developers no longer need to spend a lot of time on model tuning and data training, and can quickly deploy artificial intelligence applications.

Horizon Hobot Platform not only includes software and hardware platforms with extremely optimized performance, but also provides open and easy-to-use development tools to provide 360-degree comprehensive empowerment for robot developers. At the operating system level, TogetherROS™ is a completely open source system and is fully compatible with the interface of ROS2. TogetherROS™ provides a variety of application tools, including Hobot DNN inference framework, Hobot Sensor sensor module and a variety of commonly used robot development tools. It is convenient for developers to use; at the reference algorithm level, Horizon will migrate the algorithm of the autonomous driving scene to the robot scene and open source it in the future to accelerate the improvement of the overall level of the industry; and then at the application instance level, Horizon will be able to provide developer cars and indoor service robots , outdoor mobile robots and many other examples, covering development difficulties and working environments from simple to complex, meeting the diverse needs of developers; in addition, in terms of development tools, the AI ​​development tool Horizon Eddie® provided by Horizon, storage cost, GPU Training costs and data annotation costs have been reduced to varying degrees, and data mining, business development, and scene iteration are more efficient, assisting the rapid development of robot applications.

Working with developers, the surprise sale of cost-effective development boards

In addition to the ultimate performance optimization of "software and hardware integration" and the improvement of development efficiency of "openness and ease of use", Horizon also hopes to bring developers a one-stop development experience. Horizon teamed up with its partners to adapt core components and kits related to robot development, and announced at this conference the launch of the Rising Sun® X3 Pie, a robot development board with high computing power and high compatibility, priced at 499 yuan for the 2G version and 549 yuan for the 4G version. . Based on the Horizon Rising Sun®

Horizon Rising Sun® It has 5 TOPS computing power and super AI acceleration capabilities, and is compatible with the mainstream development board "Raspberry Pi", providing a new hardware basic choice for embedded developers to get started quickly.

Wang Cong, general manager of Horizon AIoT & Universal Robots Division, announced at the press conference: "In order to allow developers to enjoy the fun of development, Rising Sun® X3 Pie is sold at a price of 499 yuan for the 2G version and 549 yuan for the 4G version. . Developers can purchase through the Horizon Developer Community and WeChat official account. The first 100 developers who apply and meet the conditions will also receive a Rising Sun® X3 Pie for free." It is reported that the current price of the mainstream development version 4G version on the market is Around 1,000 yuan.

It is not enough to rely solely on development boards for robot development. Horizon has equipped developers with complete development components to greatly improve development efficiency. At the same time, Horizon has also adapted development platforms such as Car and Wheel with its partners to assist developers in their development work. Developers can purchase Xuri® X3 Pie or various development platform robots built by ecological partners based on Xuri® X3 Pie to enjoy the fun of development.

In addition, Horizon will also provide a series of three-dimensional and diverse developer services. Including the comprehensive upgrade of the Horizon developer community, the ROS (Robot Operating System) quality courses launched by Gu Yueju and the deeply customized courses for TogetherROS™; efficient response to supporting services for developers within 24 hours; providing dissemination of outstanding developer works Support, and in order to achieve mass production level cooperation, special business discounts will be given. In the future, Horizon will also regularly hold developer interactive activities, including monthly developer face-to-face meetings, quarterly acceleration camps, annual robot competitions and developer conferences, etc., to maintain in-depth communication and resonance with the developer community.

Join hands with partners to build a prosperous robot ecosystem

In recent years, with technological progress, industrial development, and increasing demand, domestic and foreign technology giants have also paid more attention to robots Gradually increasing: Tesla announced the plan for the humanoid robot Optimus Prime, and Nvidia has repeatedly mentioned the view that "robots will first be used in the field of autonomous driving and then gradually expand." Wang Cong said: "With the rapid development of robots, the strength of the robot ecosystem is the root cause of the progress of the entire industry."

At this press conference, Horizon invited Liu Binbin, product director of Ecovacs Robotics, Zhang Di, founder and CEO of Benmo Technology, Xu Shixin, deputy general manager of Sunny Intelligent Optical Technology Co., Ltd., and Hu Chunxu, founder of Guyueju, to share the highlights of the cooperation between the two parties. , and expressed his expectations for jointly building a robot development ecosystem. In addition, companies such as Obi Zhongguang and Ledong LDROBOT also announced relevant cooperation with the Horizon Robot Development Platform.

The cooperation between Horizon and Benmo Technology, a leader in the field of robotic joints, has enabled the companionship of the robot's "brain" and "cerebellum". Benmo Technology's unique direct-drive solution allows robots to serve specific scenarios more quietly, more conveniently, and more flexibly without the need for a reducer. It is equivalent to the "muscle" of wheel-footed robot products and robot motion control technology. Equivalent to the "cerebellum"; the edge computing capabilities provided by Horizon are equivalent to the "brain". Zhang Di, founder and CEO of Benmo Technology, said: "Based on Horizon's comprehensive empowerment at the computing power and algorithm levels, Benmo Technology can significantly save R&D time and improve R&D efficiency when developing service robots."

The first domestic AI wheeled robot development platform - Xingtian

The cooperation with Sunny Intelligent Optics, a leader in the field of robot vision solutions, gives the robot clearer vision 's "eyes". Through Horizon's empowerment in computing power and algorithms, the capabilities of Sunny Intelligent Optics' multi-style visual sensors can be maximized. In terms of processing the three traditional scenarios of MPI (multipath interference), Sunny Intelligent Optics performs deep learning optimization based on the powerful BPU performance of Horizon Rising Sun® 3, and achieves the ultimate performance optimization of MPI optimization for different environments. Xu Shixin, deputy general manager of Sunny Intelligent Optical Technology Co., Ltd., said that in the future, Sunny Intelligent Optics will further develop its efforts with Horizon in the fields of sweepers, commercial service robots, industrial robots, etc., and will also work in XR, smart doors/locks, smart Cooperate in newer visual fields such as screens.

Horizon will also continue to work with Gu Yueju to create systematic content resources and launch a series of courses that allow developers to easily get started and grow quickly. At present, the ROS quality courses launched in conjunction with Gu Yueju and the in-depth customized courses for Horizon TogetherROS™ are now online, which can provide developers with neural network guidelines for efficient design of Horizon and empower development work.

In addition, Horizon has also cooperated with Obi Zhongguang, an industry-leading 3D visual perception overall technology solution provider. In the field of service robots, OBI Zhongguang is a major domestic 3D vision sensor provider, serving many head robot companies. In this cooperation, Aobi Zhongguang provided the horizon robot development platform with a depth camera Dabai Pro based on binocular structured light technology, which can detect object depth data in a distance range of 0.3m-3m and realize obstacle avoidance, navigation, and distance perception of the robot. , face recognition and other functions.

LDROBOT, a high-tech enterprise specializing in independent research and development and manufacturing of robot mobile sensing technology, is also an important partner of Horizon. The two radar sensors that Horizon and Ledong are cooperating with this time are: LD14 triangular lidar and LD19 DTOF lidar. Both lidars have been adapted on the robot platform and Rising Sun® X3 Pi, and can quickly obtain environmental information through the SDK (Software Development Kit). It has the characteristics of small size, light deployment and extremely cost-effective.

Horizon adheres to the cooperation tenet of technological openness, efficient support, joint development, and flexible services, and establishes an open and win-win cooperative relationship with partners and developers to drive new business value. In the field of general robots, Horizon uses "chips, algorithms, and tool chains" as its core to create an underlying computing platform and development ecosystem for the future era of robots. With an open and win-win cooperation model, Horizon helps industry partners accelerate the mass production of intelligent robots.

"Stay in awe in the turbulent era and keep our original aspirations for the promising future. We believe that we will eventually join hands to usher in a more prosperous tomorrow for the robot industry." As the general manager of Horizon AIOT & General Robot Division Wang Cong said that the "tomorrow" of the robot industry requires more outstanding partners to continue to join and work together.

The above is the detailed content of To jointly build a prosperous robot ecosystem, Horizon launches China's first open and easy-to-use robot development platform that integrates software and hardware. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!