Qualcomm upgrades robotics platform to add 5G connectivity and ultimate computing power

Robotics is an important part of the company’s diversification plan to expand beyond smartphones.

Qualcomm Technologies today announced the latest version of its AMR robotics and reference design platform to provide advanced robots with 5G connectivity and artificial intelligence at ultimate computing power.

The Qualcomm Robotics RB6 and Qualcomm RB5 AMR Reference Design platforms will support evolving applications for OEMs and robotics manufacturers who want to add ground-based robots to industrial applications for applications for government services, logistics, healthcare, retail, warehousing, agriculture, construction and utilities. The new technology can power delivery robots, automated production robots, urban air mobility vehicles and industrial drone infrastructure.

The Qualcomm RB5 AMR reference design is the world’s first reference AMR design to offer tightly integrated enhanced AI and 5G capabilities, according to the company. Qualcomm expects that this design will accelerate the development of commercial, corporate and industrial robots for industries working on connected smart end robotics solutions.

Dev Singh, GM of robotics, drones and smart machines at Qualcomm, said robotics is an important part of the company’s diversification strategy.

“We see Qualcomm becoming the default choice for delivery robots, urban air mobility and wireless factories,” he told a news conference. “This is because we have a technological roadmap and we are very well positioned to meet these challenges.

Singh said that advances in connectivity and peripheral computing will help make autonomous robots smarter and safer. The features of the robotics platform include:

• Heterogeneous calculations
• Up to 24 cameras
• Distributed intelligence on the device, on the edge and in the cloud
• Security processing unit for hardware based security
• Qualcomm AI Engine with 70 – 200 TOPS
• High bandwidth, low latency and below-6GHx and mmWave
• Energy efficiency

Qualcomm announced this news as part of the company 5G summit, held from 9 May to 11 May in San Diego. There is a live streaming of the main note from the personal event. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon will make a presentation on the development of 5G to power the associated smart advantage. Other sessions will be available upon request on the event website afterwards.

The Qualcomm Robotics RB6 platform includes hardware and software development tools and a fully integrated AI software development kit and Qualcomm Intelligent Multimedia SDK. This software development kit (SDK) combines multimedia, AI and ML, computer vision and network building blocks to support the complete deployment of robotic applications.

Qualcomm lists ADLINK, Akasha Imaging, Cyngn, ForwardX FutureMind, Hyundai Robotics, inVia Robotics, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics and Thundercom among its corporate collaborators.

The Qualcomm RB5 AMR reference design is available for pre-sale now via ModalAI, and the Qualcomm Robotics RB6 development kit is available for sale via Thundercomm.