Arrow Electronics, Inc. and its company eInfochips have established a Robotics Center of Excellence (COE). Particularly, the new center aims to accelerate time to market for the development of cutting-edge automation solutions. Such as for use in manufacturing, digital factories, and other industries.

Arrow has teamed with global technology leaders Analog Devices (ADI), NVIDIA, and onsemi image sensors to develop reference designs. Moreover, come out with proof of concepts that robotics customers can leverage to improve product design.

Arrow has made investments in resources, including engineers, hardware, software, and simulators. Platforms from NVIDIA include Jetson developer kits and modules, Isaac Sim, Omniverse, Metropolis, TAO Toolkit, TensorRT, and Triton Inference Server. Additionally, Arrow will leverage open-source tools like ROS and Gazebo. The Robotics COE aims to help innovators with solutions and reference designs that will address the common robotics tasks of perception, navigation, and planning.

Enable Industry 4.0 Growth

The opening of the Robotics COE comes at a time when the use of robotics will become ubiquitous. According to the International Federation of Robotics, robots and cobots (collaborative robots) in industrial manufacturing have doubled in the last five years. There is an increasing need for robots to operate safely, accurately, and efficiently in a variety of environments. At the same time, helping ensure the ability to identify and interact with objects in their surroundings. These requirements make developing robotic solutions a challenge.

“The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence at the edge as well as applications such as autonomous machines will revolutionize the digital factory to enable the deployment and growth of Industry 4.0,” said Aiden Mitchell, senior vice president of global marketing and engineering at Arrow Electronics.

Consequently, Mitchell said, “Arrow Electronics is proud to work together with ADI to create a center of excellence. (In addition) to empower the Intelligent Edge through design services capabilities, reduce technology complexities, and accelerate time to market.”

Customers can rely on the Robotics COE to help deliver innovative and leading robotics solutions and accelerate and de-risk design cycles. In addition, it can also leverage ADI sensor technologies in conjunction with computing platform products and development kits for robotics. Also, it can provide access to a world-class support team enabling them to plan and manage their product roadmap and lifecycles.

Leo McHugh, vice president of industrial automation at ADI, said, “Integrating the latest modular solutions from ADI with state-of-the-art AI modules, complex algorithms, and simulation tools from NVIDIA. (This) will allow our customers to focus on their specific applications and bring solutions to market faster.”