eYs3D Launches One-Stop XINK Development Platform for Vision-Equipped Robots

eYs3D Microelectronics, a subsidiary of Etron Technology, a subsidiary of Etron Technology, launched at CES a state-of-the-art computer vision development platform for next-generation autonomous robotic applications such as AIoT (artificial intelligence of things), smart city, indoor cleaning robots, and outdoor agricultural robots for both industrial and retail sectors.

The platform, called XINK, is both a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) as well as a hardware and software development kit that is a cost-effective solution for design of safe, vision-capable mobile AI products equipped with field analysis, object recognition, obstacle detection, object tracking and following, and route planning functions.

XINK provides all the necessary elements for product development, including high-performance compute power, AI accelerator, I/O controls and Flexi-bus communication peripherals, smart power management and machine vision subsystems. The modular XINK platform takes care of low-level programming, freeing developers to use cut-and-paste coding for application-specific design while reducing design cycles for quicker commercialization.

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XINK has versatile Imaging Signal Processing (ISP) support features. XINK opens to integrate the ISP inside as well as supports external ISP solutions, like eYs3D’s eSP87x series stereo video and depth processor. The eYs3D stereo video and depth camera, empowered by eSP87x, can be connected to the XINK platform via USB to capture video and depth stream for 3D data creation and for AI/ML analysis.  The edge AI processing is powered by eYs3D’s new eCV1 AI chip that incorporates four Core ARM 64-Bit CPUs and a 4.6 TOPS neural processor unit (NPU). An additional low power ARM Cortex M4 processor can be used as an MCU. The platform supports various AI inference tools including Tenorflow, Tensorflow Lite, PyTorch, Caffe, TVM and more.

According to Grand View Research the global autonomous robot market size is expected to reach $10.66B by 2030, a CAGR of 16.8% from 2022, in part due to expansion in materials handling needs.

“New technologies have enabled surging market growth for artificial intelligence, and Semiconductor play the core role,” said Dr Nicky Lu, Chairman, CEO, and Founder of Etron. “In addition to establishing an AI ecosystem and developing key technologies, we are proud of Launching Xink today. These intelligent product chipsets and microsystem have strong supports from close collaborations from our Foundry and OSAT partners,

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AI-on-Chip Taiwan Alliance, Department of Industrial Technology, and Ministry of Economic Affairs. Their unceasing efforts to establish an excellent industrial environment aimed at facilitating ongoing innovation and a concrete ecosystem for AI.”

“New technologies have enabled surging market growth for mobile robotics,” said James Wang, Chief Strategy Officer of eYs3D. “Mobile autonomy must be accompanied by advances in computer vision to enable new areas of robotic deployment, including accurate picking and packing; moving, sorting and efficiently storing items; autonomous navigation; and other markets. Our XINK platform will allow rapid, one-stop development of vision capabilities for these applications, and we expect to host a community of developers who will both provide and benefit from contributed building blocks.”

XINK offers multiple benefits:

• Industry 4.0 application readiness, via high-speed communications and conformance to IEEE 1588 standards.
• Effective power management, including with sleep and deep sleep modes for unused blocks, supporting always-on capability.
• Superior computing performance through the quad-core Cortex A55 and the 4.6 TOPS NPU in the eCV1 chip, which provides dedicated machine learning instructions, a patented neural network engine, and Tensor Processing Fabric.
• Highly flexible image and computer vision processing for domain-specific applications

It also supplies developers with H.264 compression for easy video streaming. XINK’s Crypto Engine includes ARM’s TrustZone for security as well as a pseudorandom number generator and a variety of other encryption to protect user data through hardware-based isolation.

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