The Morning After: NVIDIA's new 'AI brain' for robots
NVIDIA’s move into robotics took another major step. It’s now selling for $1,999 the new Jetson AGX Orin developer kit, a palm-sized computing device up to eight times more powerful than its old Jetson AGX Xavier (275 trillion operations per second, or TOPS). It’s capable of these dizzying speeds thanks to its 12-core ARM CPUs, Ampere-based GPU and upgrades in plenty of other places. NVIDIA is also helping robot creators with a new Isaac Nova Orin platform that includes two Jetson AGX Orin modules and the sensors needed for a robot to detect the world around it. The platform can handle up to six cameras, three LiDAR units and eight ultrasonic sensors.
You might have to wait for NVIDIA’s robot innovations, though. Most of this will come before the end of 2022, with a $399 for a basic Orin NX kit set to debut in Q4. Prospective clients are probably not you and me, but NVIDIA’s past robot brain tech has been used in John Deere’s autonomous tractor and Hyundai Robotics’ projects.
— Mat Smith
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