Arrow Electronics creates robotics centre of excellence to empower the intelligent Edge and advance automation

Arrow has teamed with Analog Devices (ADI), NVIDIA, and onsemi image sensors to develop reference designs and proof of concepts that robotics customers can leverage to improve product design.

Arrow has made investments in resources, including engineers, hardware, software, and simulators. Platforms from NVIDIA include Jetson developer kits and modules, Isaac Sim, Omniverse, Metropolis, TAO Toolkit, TensorRT, and Triton Inference Server. Additionally, Arrow will leverage open-source tools like ROS and Gazebo. The Robotics COE aims to help innovators with solutions and reference designs that will address the common robotics tasks of perception, navigation, and planning.

The opening of the Robotics COE comes at a time when the use of robotics is soon to be ubiquitous. According to the International Federation of Robotics, robots and cobots (collaborative robots) in industrial manufacturing have doubled in the last five years. There is an increasing need for robots to operate safely, accurately, and efficiently in a variety of environments while helping ensure the ability to identify and interact with objects in their surroundings. These requirements make developing robotic solutions a challenge.

“The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence at the edge as well as applications such as autonomous machines will revolutionise the digital factory to enable the deployment and growth of Industry 4.0,” said Aiden Mitchell, senior vice president of global marketing and engineering at Arrow Electronics. “Arrow Electronics is proud to work together with ADI to create a centre of excellence to empower the Intelligent Edge through design services capabilities, reduce technology complexities, and accelerate time to market.”

Customers can rely on the Robotics COE to help deliver innovative and leading robotics solutions, accelerate and de-risk design cycles, leverage ADI sensor technologies in conjunction with computing platform products and development kits for robotics, and provide access to a world-class support team enabling them to plan and manage their product roadmap and lifecycles.

“ADI and Arrow Electronics are working together to develop advanced automation solutions such as industrial robotics for the broad market customer base,” said Leo McHugh, vice president of industrial automation at ADI. “Integrating the latest modular solutions from ADI with state-of-the-art AI modules, complex algorithms, and simulation tools from NVIDIA will allow our customers to focus on their specific applications and bring solutions to market faster.”

The Robotics COE is already creating advancements. The first solution from the Robotics COE initiative, the VSLAM and Sensor Fusion algorithms utilising ADI CMOS TOS and IMU, is being demonstrated at Sensors Converge in San Jose, Calif. (Booth 1034).