Qualcomm® Robotics RB3 Platform(SDA845)

The Qualcomm Robotics RB3 development kit supports the development of smart, power-efficient and cost-effective robots by combining high-performance heterogeneous computing, Qualcomm® Artificial Intelligence (AI) Engine for on-device machine learning, computer vision, vault-like security, multimedia and Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity (4G/LTE and CBRS). Comprised of a comprehensive set of software & hardware, including the industry’s best performing 6-Axis Motion Sensor (ICM-42688), Top Port PDM Microphone (ICS-41351), and Barometric Pressure Sensor (ICP-10101) from TDK InvenSense.The Qualcomm Robotics RB3 development kit is designed to help manufacturers and developers create robotic products ranging from large industrial and enterprise robots to small battery-operated one’s with challenging power and thermal dissipation requirements.



Introduction
The Qualcomm Robotics RB3 development kit includes the purpose-built robotics-focused DragonBoard™ 845c development board, based on the Qualcomm® SDA845 processor and compliant with the 96Boards open hardware specification to support a broad range of mezzanine-board expansions.

The Qualcomm SDA845 processor is a heterogeneous computing architecture and integrates an Octa Core Qualcomm ® Kryo™ CPU with performance up to 2.8GHz a Qualcomm® Adreno™ 630 Visual Processing Subsystem (including GPU, VPU and DPU), and a Qualcomm ® Hexagon™ 685 DSP with Hexagon Vector Extensions (HVX) delivering sophisticated, on-device AI processing and mobile-optimized computer vision (CV) capabilities for perception, navigation and manipulation.

The development board supports Linux and Robotics Operating System (ROS), while also including support for the Qualcomm® Neural Processing software development kit (SDK) for advanced on-device AI, the Qualcomm ® Computer Vision Suite, the Qualcomm ® Hexagon DSP SDK, and AWS RoboMaker.

The kit includes:

 * Robotics DragonBoard™ 845c development board featuring Qualcomm® SDA/SDM845 processor and compliant with the 96Boards open hardware specification
 * Qualcomm Robotics navigation mezzanine featuring time-of-flight, tracking camera, active stereo camera and main camera, which is compliant with 96Boards open hardware specification
 * Sensor support including the industry’s best performing ICM-42688 6-Axis High Performance Motion Sensor, ICS-41351 Top Port Digital Microphone, and ICP-10101 Barometric Pressure Sensor from TDK InvenSense
 * Qualcomm Robotics cellular mezzanine (optional)
 * Multi-Mic support
 * Power supply

Applications

 * Service Robot
 * Industrial Robot
 * Industrial control
 * Automated Guided Vehicle
 * Self-driving vehicle for logistics
 * Consumer/Entertainment Robot
 * Industrail Drone

Highlights
On-device intelligence powered by Artificial Intelligence Engine (AIE) The Qualcomm ® AI Engine on the Qualcomm® Robotics RB3 Platform includes the Qualcomm® Neural Processing SDK, which encompasses analysis, optimization, and debugging tools designed to allow developers and manufacturers to port trained deep learning networks on the various heterogeneous compute blocks offered by the platform.

Power efficient and cost-effective The Qualcomm ® Robotics RB3 Platform is designed to support large industrial and enterpriseenterprise robot’s as well as small battery-operated robots with challenging power and thermal dissipation requirements.

Comprehensive development kit Further reduce development time and complexity for intelligent high-performance robots using a feature packed development kit. The kit includes the robotics-focused DragonBoard™ 845c development board, compliant with the 96Boards open hardware specification for supporting a broad range of mezzanine-board expansions and range of sensor support like time-of-flight (ToF), active stereo camera, multi-mic, IMU and proximity.

Flexible design options for commercialization In addition to a feature packed development kit, the platform offers a range of solutions for commercialization from off-the-shelf System-on-Module (SoM) solutions to speed commercialization, to the flexibility for chip-on-board designs for cost-optimization at scale.

High resolution depth sensing Powered by Qualcomm Spectra™ 280 ISP for high resolution and high accuracy depth sensing

Time-of-Flight (ToF) camera Time-of-flight for gestures and hand tracking use cases

Tracking camera Sensor module to do visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (vSLAM)

Advanced security Qualcomm ®Secure Processing Unit, hardware root of trust, trusted execution environment, secure boot, camera security

Sensor Core Support for multiple sensors and 3rd party algorithms through Sensor Software Framework

Connectivity Wi-Fi integrated 802.11ac 2x2 with MU-MIMO and support for Bluetooth 5.0 and cellular mezzanines for LTE and CBRS

Feature Demo


Qualcomm’s Robotics RB3 Platform with ROS has been seamlessly integrated with and drives Kobuki mobile research base. RB3 platform’s ToF camera or structured light camera can be used for depth mapping and development of navigation algorithms to drive the Kobuki. RB3 platform’s tracking camera can be used for visual simultaneous location and mapping (vSLAM), and the high resolution camera can be used for video recording.

Specialized Solutions

 * Software Support for Linux and Robot Operating System (ROS)
 * Qualcomm® Neural Processing SDK: optimizing deep learning processing performance across available resources to achieve superior edge computing experience.
 * Qualcomm FastCV Computer Vision SDK: Offers a mobile-optimized computer vision (CV) library which enables new user experiences like gesture recognition, face detection, tracking and recognition, text recognition and tracking and augmented reality.
 * Qualcomm® Hexagon DSP SDK: The Hexagon™ SDK is designed to optimize the features and performance of multimedia software.
 * Qualcomm® Secure Processing Unit (SPU) offers vault-like security that safeguards your facial data, iris scan and other biometric data.

Technical Documents
RB3 Documents Download

Hardware

 * Quick Start Guide
 * Robotics DragonBoard 845c Spec
 * Robotics Navigation Mezzanine Spec
 * Robotics Machine Communication Mezzanine Spec
 * Main Camera Spec
 * Tracking Camera Spec
 * ToF Camera Hardware User Guide
 * SLM Camera Hardware User Guide
 * Qualcomm Robotics RB3 Platform Hardware User Guide
 * Qualcomm Robotics RB3 Platform Schematics
 * Qualcomm Robotics RB3 Platform 3D STEP Models
 * D845 SOM Datasheet
 * D845 SOM GPIO Pin Assignment

Software

 * Qualcomm Robotics RB3 Platform Linux User Guide
 * Qualcomm Robotics RB3 Platform Release notes
 * SLM Camera ImageViewer.pdf
 * RB3 Robomaker Guide

Firmware

 * Qualcomm Robotics RB3 Platform Image_20190904
 * Qualcomm Robotics RB3 Platform Image_20191224
 * Readme

Samples-apps-codes

 * button_test.tar
 * can-test.tar
 * bt-app_test.tar
 * aplay_test.tar
 * hal_play_test.tar
 * sns_hal_tests.tar
 * camera_test.tar
 * omx_test.tar
 * gst_test.tar
 * opengles_test.tar
 * ros_test.tar

testResource

 * Audio
 * FastCV
 * OpenGLES
 * Video
 * SNPE

Tools

 * SLM Camera Image Viewer.exe
 * App Toolchain SDK
 * QTI USB driver
 * TFlash
 * Thundersoft_Flash_Programmer_Tool_User_Guide*

FAQ
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