RTC Magazine

Automated robots are popping up more and more in factories and critical field applications. From robotic arms to freestanding and mobile “helping” machines programmed to perform multiple tasks, robotic automation is changing the way many organizations do business. No longer passed off as the stuff of science fiction, this trend is becoming more real every day, as organizations are tasked with obtaining optimum efficiency, reducing headcount and costs, and maintaining workplace safety.

As the technology and computing platforms behind it continue to improve, the benefits of robotics within an automation environment become more apparent. Adaptable, small and rugged, today’s crop of computing platforms for automated robots offers a variety of advantages that enable them to do what and go where humans cannot for optimum safety and efficiency.

ETX technology has become a key factor in advancing automation designs in safety products, control modules, sensors and switches. A closer look at the specific advantages ETX 3.0 offers makes the connection between this standard and the advancement of robotic automation more apparent.

Robotics Poised for Growth

Manufacturers in all industries are recognizing that significant increases in productivity can be realized by implementing the appropriate mix of established and emerging automation technologies. One of the key automation technologies characterizing this blend of conventional expertise with enabling technology is robotics.

The older industrial robotics segment consists of immobile, single-task robots that have little interaction with humans or the world around them. They are often termed industrial robots because they are exclusively employed in manufacturing and factory floor automation. These feature articulated robotic arms to position components and tooling to achieve the required accuracy for spot welding cars, painting or checking for irregularities in assembled products.

The newer generation is mobile, interactive robotic devices with a high degree of intelligence built into them. These robots are able to freely interact with humans, other robots and their surroundings. When combined with the use of automated methods, this new breed of robotics can provide significant performance and productivity in medicine, defense, space and underwater exploration, service industries and manufacturing applications.

These intelligent machines and systems can do work too dirty, too dangerous, too precise or too tedious for humans. iRobot Corp., a company that specializes in behavior-based robots that help people complete tasks with better results, claims that its adaptable, tough and reliable robots “go where you can’t, shouldn’t or don’t want to.”

The U.S. military has been developing robotic systems for all sorts of jobs for years now, and some of them are even on the front lines in Iraq. iRobot already has commercialized a broad range of tactical mobile robots to keep military personnel out of harm’s way and tackle a variety of missions. These include surveillance and reconnaissance, bomb disposal, bomb identification, checkpoint, inspection and explosive detection, route clearance, sniper detection and force protection, perimeter patrol and resupply, among other critical missions.

Despite a recent slowdown, the outlook for the robotics industry continues to be optimistic. According to Dedham, MA-based ARC Advisory Group, “The robotics market will continue to be driven by innovation. Advances in the methods in which humans interact and work with robots and the ability of robots to work together will drive the market forward. Also driving market growth will be industries that may not have previously considered robotics but have applications that can be effectively performed by them.”

ARC adds, “The growth is driven by small- and medium-sized businesses in developed markets and strong sales in developing markets like China, India, Korea and Taiwan. The hardware market was US$3,590 million in 2005 and is forecasted to be over US$5,118 million in 2010.”

Academics promise to help boost the robotics industry even further. Georgia Tech recently announced that it will offer the first American interdisciplinary doctoral degree in robotics. The degree program will be part of the university’s new Center for Robotics and Intelligent Machines and aims to prepare researchers for the expanding global robotics market.

ETX Benefits for Automation

Critical to enhancing robotic functionality is the Embedded Technology eXtended (ETX) 3.0 specification, one of the principal COM implementations currently available in the market. The ETX standard was developed to provide an open standard to meet the needs of embedded industrial applications with PCI and ISA. The original ETX standard offered a number of advantages:

• Full PC functionality

• Minimum engineering and adoption cost

• Low cost

• Reliable connectors

• Extremely slim design

• Simple upgradeability and scalability

As technology has evolved, the ETX standard has undergone further development in scalability and performance. The ETX 3.0 specification offers all of the benefits of the original ETX standard while adding in 2x Serial ATA without changing any of the ETX pins, making new modules 100 percent pin-to-pin compatible with previous versions to ensure long-term support. This interchangeability allows for optimum scalability and reduced design risk.

Offering continued ISA support, Ethernet, USB 2.0, graphics, audio and other features, are also standards supported by multiple vendors, assuring greater design flexibility. Further benefits come from its ruggedness of ETX and its ability to withstand exposure to extended temperatures, which is critical for robotic automation in the military market.

ETX modules are very compact (measuring only 100 mm square, 12 mm thick) and highly integrated COMs, allowing them to be easily used in a variety of robotic design applications. ETX modules can include a variety of common personal computer (PC) peripheral functions including graphics, parallel, serial and USB ports, keyboard/mouse, Ethernet, sound or IDE. Peripheral PCI or ISA buses can be implemented directly on the baseboard rather than on mechanically unwieldy expansion cards. Since all ETX modules feature a standardized form-factor and a standardized connector layout that carries a specific set of signals, designers can create a single-system baseboard that can accept present and future ETX modules. This ability to build a system on a single baseboard using the computer as one plug-in component, simplifies packaging, eliminates cabling and significantly reduces system-level cost.

Developing AUVs

The Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition, hosted by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) and ONR, is an annual competition. Unmanned vehicles were put to the test at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center. The fate of each vehicle was entrusted to an onboard embedded computer that was responsible for processing physical data from numerous instruments, processing camera inputs for machine vision and running the complex software that enables autonomous operation.

In 2007, Kontron sponsored a team of participating students from Canada’s École de Technologie Supérieure engineering university. Kontron’s role was to provide the team with its advanced embedded computing platform and expertise, providing the essential computing “brain” to power the team’s unique vehicle, named “Système d’Opération Nautique Intelligent et Autonome” (SONIA). From 2003-2007, the SONIA Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) design team has taken full advantage of its modest budget and of corporate sponsorship opportunities to achieve second and third place standings in competition.

SONIA illustrates a great example of an application with very specific embedded computing requirements beyond the obligatory small form-factor (Figure 1). The vehicle’s operation is dependent on data and telemetry from various instruments and sensors, each of which requires an independent interface to the processing board.

The complexity of the software algorithms demands that the processor be capable of reliable and continuous program execution. This implies a higher consumption of power and greater thermal footprint due to reduced idle time of the processor. However, thermal considerations must not be ignored in SONIA’s operating environment. A typical embedded system takes advantage of outside air circulating through the chassis to aid in cooling its components, which is not possible when the system is sealed in an airtight box underwater. Thermal management options are limited, thus it is essential that the onboard computer processor sets an example of power consciousness, robustness and efficient system operation to minimize the thermal impact of the embedded system.

The SONIA design team was comprised solely of undergraduate students on a volunteer basis. Another constraint was its small budget, in terms of both money and time, and the varied backgrounds of team members. The expense, lead time, attention to detail and testing that would be necessary with a fully customized embedded computing solution would not be feasible for this team. Any hardware used in the system needed to be readily available in case of necessary replacement, and pricing needed to allow for a backup to be purchased at any time.

The modularity of stack and individual boards offered an attractive solution. This is one of the major reasons the team selected a Kontron embedded SBC, as it allowed them to mix, match and add different combinations of I/O. Standard desktop computer memory, for example, makes it easy to upgrade the capacity and speed of the system memory at any time. It is always readily available, competitively priced and requires no rework or soldering on the board. An added cost and reliability benefit was the absence of cables to connect the CPU board and the extension boards. This simplicity allowed every SONIA AUV design team member to understand the complicated embedded system interfaces without having a background in electrical or computer engineering.

ETX – A Critical Enabler of the Robotic Automation Movement

The SONIA team is expected to base its future AUV designs on the full-featured Embedded Technology eXtended (ETX) module. Using a COM would solve the team’s need for high processing power in a small form-factor. Since all ETX modules feature a standardized form-factor and a standardized connector layout that carry a specific set of signals, the SONIA design team could create a single system baseboard (off-the-shelf carrier boards also are available) that would accept present and future ETX modules as needed. This would eliminate cabling, and significantly reduce the system level cost for the team. Using an ETX solution can give the team the full range of functions and performance found in a desktop PC motherboard all in a cost-efficient compact package.

Now that the SONIA team has started development of their next-generation AUV, they are utilizing two ETX solutions—the ETX-LX and the ETX-CD (Figure 2)—at the core of their design. These are then paired with an off-the-shelf carrier board from one of Kontron’s Certified Design Partners to provide all of the necessary computing power to enable the next generation of SONIA.

In labs and research institutes across the world, fueled by military funding, space exploration and healthcare needs, robot concept devices and prototypes of these visions of our future reality are finally starting to emerge. Technologies, like ETX, are helping to enable the robotic automation movement and begin the inevitable march toward practical and then commercial development.

Kontron America
Poway, CA.
(858) 677-0877.
[www.kontron.com].