Chip-driven, Texas Instruments helps robots "go steady and far"

The "OFweek 2024 (13th) China Robotics Industry Conference" hosted by OFweek, a Chinese high-tech portal, and organized by OFweek Robotics was successfully held in Shenzhen from April 18 to 19. At the "Technology Frontier Trends" special session held on the first day, Zhao Xiangyuan, general manager of motor drives and robots at Texas Instruments Industrial Systems, delivered a keynote speech entitled "Semiconductor technology helps build smarter, safer and more economical robots . "

With the acceleration of a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, the new generation of information technology, biotechnology, new materials and other technologies are deeply integrated with robotics technology. The robotics industry has entered a golden period of leapfrog development and has become an important driving force for promoting new quality productivity. Among them, semiconductors play a vital role in the development and function of robots.

As a global leading semiconductor design and manufacturing company, Texas Instruments is committed to helping build smarter, safer and more economical robotic systems through analog and embedded processing technologies and products.

At present, robots do not simply replace manual labor, but are anthropomorphic electronic mechanical devices that combine the strengths of humans and machines. As a result, they are widely used in many fields such as industry, medicine , and commerce, including industrial collaborative robots , transportation robots, medical robots , companion service robots , etc.

In the process of rapid development of the robot industry, Texas Instruments has noticed its four major trends, namely, how to be more intelligent and work in harmony with humans; how to learn, make decisions and optimize work processes autonomously; how to improve safety performance and ensure the safety of personnel in human-machine collaboration; how to achieve energy conservation and emission reduction, and be economical and efficient .

To meet this trend, Texas Instruments has introduced wireless connectivity microcontrollers (MCUs), general and application-specific MCUs and processors based on the Arm? Cortex?-M, -R and -A CPU architectures, C2000? real-time MCUs, and high-performance radar sensors .

The C2000? series of microcontrollers (MCUs) uses the C2000F2838x 32-bit microcontroller to enable designers to implement connectivity for AC servo drives and other industrial systems on a single chip, including EtherCAT, Ethernet, and Controller Area Network with Flexible Data Rate (CAN FD).

Data shows that the global gallium nitride power device market size will be US$180 million in 2022 and will reach US$1.33 billion by 2026, with an average annual compound growth rate of 65%.

As the gallium nitride market matures, Texas Instruments has launched a series of low-power gallium nitride (GaN) products that can help increase power density, significantly improve system efficiency, and reduce the size of AC/DC consumer power electronics and industrial systems.

For the collaborative robot track, Texas Instruments' GaN motor driver further reduces its size through integrated design, and is not affected by parasitic parameters, greatly improving operational safety and stability.

At the beginning of last month, Texas Instruments launched two new power conversion device product lines, namely 100V integrated gallium nitride (GaN) power stage and 1.5W isolated DC/DC module, which can help engineers achieve higher power in a smaller space, thus providing ultra-high power density at a lower cost.

Zhao Xiangyuan said in his speech that the systemic safety of robots is very important, similar to the need for eyes for humans. Only when people see an object can they sense its existence and understand how to operate next to ensure safety.

Texas Instruments has a single functional safety MCU that can support multi-core functions and can also integrate public safety into complex NPUs to achieve system-level functional safety design for the entire NPU.

Faced with high system costs, maintenance costs and development costs, Texas Instruments is able to reduce cost expenditures through technical optimization, and will continue to provide innovative and optimized solutions for various types of robots with analog and embedded technologies as the core.

The TDA4x processor developed by Texas Instruments has 8 Cortex-A72 and 4 R5F cores, as well as efficient vision, deep learning hardware accelerators and DSP. It can process rich image, radar and motion control data. It is a single-chip robot controller that can achieve functional safety.

In addition, TI’s SafeTI® functional safety hardware development process has been certified for use in developing components that comply with ISO 26262 and IEC 61508. TI is the first semiconductor company to receive this TüV SüD process certification.

C2000?, real-time control microcontrollers, Sitara?, real-time control microcontrollers, gate drivers and gallium nitride (GaN) power devices...all demonstrate the hard-core strength of Texas Instruments.

Musk once said: "Every home needs at least one humanoid robot."

I believe that in the future, Texas Instruments will continue to provide a full range of embedded processors designed to meet the stringent requirements of industrial automation , meet the performance, power consumption and security requirements of different groups of people in various industrial environments, and help create smarter, safer, more efficient and more economical robots.