AUOAMR Robots Collaborating Directlywith Each Other!
How AUO Joined Hands with ADLINK and Intelto Promote the Overall Evolution of theManufacturing Industry

Introduction

Challenges

SolutionsInsights

Introduction

AUO(AU Optronics)
Industry: Optoelectronics
Headquarters: Hsinchu, Taiwan
Global Employee: 40,000+
Website: https://www.auo.com/
AUO has demonstrated outstanding innovation capabilities basedon its profound display R&D and manufacturing experience with afull range of display products. In the age of digital transformation,
AUO integrates software, hardware, cloud and service platforms
to enter the diverse application market of the ﬁeld economy.
Seeing the potential of AMR development, AU Optronics (AUO),
which has been a panel manufacturing company for more than adecade, has taken the leap to become a smart manufacturingsolution provider and considers AMR as one of its main products.

Chen Wen-Chieh, Director of AUO’s Commercial Solutions R&D Division,
pointed out that he global AMR market will continue to expand at acompound annual growth rate of 15.2% between 2020 and 2025, and themarket size is expected to reach US$646 million by 2025. Out of which,warehousing and manufacturing production line applications will be the mostimportant force driving the growth of AMR market. With years of experienceand expertise in the manufacturing ﬁeld, AUO is not only able to respond to
customers’ needs quickly, but can also replicate them to various industries.

Challenges

When AUO ﬁrst entered the AMR market, the in-housedevelopment team was responsible for everything from vehicle
design, operating system integration, SLAM algorithms, andsystem function development. In order to speed up the productdevelopment, the in-house team unanimously decided to use ROS,
a robotics operating system, because it is an open source platformthat has accumulated a huge amount of resources in AMR
applications, including SLAM, obstacle avoidance, and navigation,
which is helpful for product development.

However, Wang Yung-Ti, Manager of AUO’s Commercial Solutions
Business Division, revealed that in the past, it took at least 4-6
months to develop a product using a general industrial PC as thecontroller and integrating the ROS operating system by themselves.

Solutions

Reducing Development Time by At Least One-Third,
Making ADLINK the best Product Upgrade Partner for AUO
During the product upgrade process, AUO observed that ADLINK has been involved in thedevelopment of ROS 2 for a long time. In addition to integrating the robot controller ROScube
with the ROS environment, ADLINK can also provide the related ROS software development
kit NeuronSDK and professional technical assistance, making it AUO’s best partner.
Thanks to the integrated environment of ROScube and the NeuronSDK, the development
time of the new generation of products has been eﬀectively shortened by 2 months byeliminating the need for AUO to carry out the hardware and software integration.

Software

SLAM

Environment

MotionControl

Image
Processing

FleetManagement

ObjectRecognition

ROS/ROS2

OSHardware

AMR Architecture

RTOS

3D Cameras
Intel® RealSense™

LinuxReal-time Robotic Controller
ADLINK® ROScube™

Sensors

Sensors

Motor
Control
SystemAUO is actively upgrading its products by introducing the ROScube-I, a ROS 2 controller from industrial computer maker ADLINK and Intel, to speed up theAMR time-to-market.

Solutions

Super Evolution from ROS 1 to ROS 2!
AUO’s AMR Fleet Can Carry Out Group Collaboration and Greatly Improve EﬃciencyHowever, the communication method used in ROS 1 can only carry out ﬂeet
management through the upper-level system. But if two AMRs meet in the middleof a task, which one should go ﬁrst? Or which vehicle can support other tasks in anemergency? All these AMRs have to be dispatched by the upper-level system,
which is a relatively ineﬃcient system structure when the plant area is large andthere are a large number of AMRs.
The key core technology of ROS 2, Data Distribution Service (DDS), has improved
the shortcomings of the centralized communication structure of ROS 1, allowing
AMRs to communicate vehicle-to-vehicle, or even to collaborate in a decentralizedmanner without the need to go through the upper-level ﬂeet management system,
which naturally improves operational eﬃciency.

“ROS 2 is the next phase of AUO’s AMR productdevelopment focus”, said Chen Wen-Chieh with
conﬁdence. ADLINK has a dedicated teamfocusing on ROS 2 for AMR applications, which
can help AUO’s AMR development team solve
problems quickly. “When we ﬁrst started to workwith ROS 2, our in-house team was not yet veryfamiliar with DDS technology, so ADLINK
provided a lot of assistance to help us get familiar
with this technology in a short period of time.”

Solutions

AUO Plans to Introduce Virtualization Technology Architecture,
So the ROS Controller Can Also Command the Robot Arm
In addition to switching to ROS 2, there is another key point to
AUO’s product upgrade, which is the introduction of a Hypervisor
architecture for safe execution of critical tasks. Chen Wen-Chieh
explains that AUO has currently designed safety-related
functions on the bottom part of the AMR, using the MCUarchitecture, such as obstacle avoidance and anti-collision, while
the upper part’s ROS 2 operating system is responsible for tasks
such as map building, positioning, and navigation.

The ROScube is equipped with a variety of I/O ports and a ruggedized
USB to prevent loosening caused by vibration in order to meet the needsof various AMR applications. It also has a high degree of compatibility,
allowing the integration of diﬀerent robotic arms according to customer
needs. In addition, with technologies such as Intel processors, Intel Iris
display chips, Movidius, and OpenVINO, its computing performance isvery powerful, and there are plenty of spare resources to use while
performing the aforementioned vehicle control tasks.

Service OS

User OSROScube–IROScube–IROScube–IProﬁle 1

Proﬁle 2

Proﬁle 3

Real-time OS

AUO plans to implement ACRN virtualization technology architecture such as Intel Edge Control Platform(ECI) and install other real-time operating systems (RTOS) so that the ROScube can also perform operations
such as robotic arm pick-and-place operations and AI visual recognition to fully utilize hardware resources.

InsightsProfessional specialization to speed up
the application of AMR, and promote theoverall upgrade of the manufacturingindustry
For the manufacturing industry, AMR applications can eﬀectively solve thelabor shortage problem and improve the quality and yield of production, andthere is a great potential demand from the semiconductor and electronics
industries. However, despite the huge market demand, AMR is highly customized
due to the diversity of manufacturing sites and application requirements.
Through the cooperation with ADLINK, Chen Wen-Chieh hopes to carry out
professional specialization, with ADLINK taking charge of the core ROS
computing technology and AUO focusing on the development of AMR products,
while its young and energetic R&D and service teams can bring in newtechnologies and new ideas. After understanding the needs and sites ofcustomers, carry out system integration operations to help customers quickly
solve their pain points and provide perfect pre-sales/after-sales services, so as
to speed up the application of AMR and promote the comprehensive upgrade of
Taiwan’s manufacturing industry.

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