Advantech’s edge AI is powered by Nvidia for robotics and video analytics
Edge AI products powered by Nvidia have been launched by Advantech. The AIR-030 series is an edge AI system powered by the Nvidia Jetson AGX Orin, and the EPC-R7300 series for industrial box PCs is powered by Nvidia Jetson Orin NX and Orin Nano.
The Nvidia Jetson AGX Orin module offers up to 275Toperations per second and eight times the performance of the previous generation, confirmed Advantech, making the AIR-030 and EPC-R7300 series suitable for AI robotics and vision applications. These edge AI solutions come with DeviceOn for Edge AI software, which facilitates AI development lifecycle management from AI container deployment and AI model over-the-air updates to retraining and performance optimisation. DeviceOn for Edge AI also provides real-time monitoring and management from edge AI devices to cloud-based AI. Combined with server class AI performance, an industrial grade design, and edge management, the AIR-030 and EPC-R7300 series can be used for automated guided vehicles (AGV), autonomous mobile robots (AMR), robotics and vision AI applications.
The AIR-030 has a rugged design and dimensions of 200 x 220 x 74mm (7.87 x 8.66 x 2.91 inches). It delivers powerful AI inferencing capabilities by utilising Nvidia Jetson AGX Orin for energy-efficient autonomous machines. The AIR-030 is equipped with I/O including CANBus for motion and direction control, LAN and optional PoE for camera input and digital I/O for sensor control. It also provides worldwide safety and EMC certifications, including CE / FCC, CB, UL, BSMI, CCC, IEC 61000-6-2 and IEC 61000-6-4.
The AIR-030 series supports multiple expansions to better accommodate wireless module and advanced edge AI applications, with one M.2 B key 2280 / 3052 for NVME storage and 5G connectivity, one M.2 2230 E key for Wi-Fi connectivity, and one PCIe x16 slot for additional function cards support. Adding a 10GbE card scales up high speed data transmission or a GPU can be added for graphics computing. The AIR-030 series bundles with the Linux Ubuntu 20.04 OS environment and supports the Nvidia JetPack 5.0 software development kit and above, as well as the Isaac platform. This reduces the time and cost of production AI and robotics development, said Advantech.
The EPC-R7300 series industrial-grade box PC is equipped with a production carrier board with a compatible form factor and pin configuration for Jetson Orin NX and Orin Nano modules. Designed to serve as a complete industrial-grade system, the aluminium housing is claimed to provide improved heat dissipation and electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection for optimal protection. The thermal design accommodates modular and module-specific heat spreaders, enabling developers to adopt thermal solutions based on their choice of Jetson module.
The EPC-R7300 series leverages a UIO40-Express mechanical design, and its carrier board uses application-oriented I/O expansion boards for serial port (RS-232, RS-485), CANBus, isolated digital I/O, USB 2.0/3.0, and four-port GbE boards for machine vision camera input, motion control and sensing. Advantech’s AIM-Linux software service provides UIO40-Express peripheral drivers for NVIDIA JetPack. This enables UIO40-Express functionality without additional integration effort. The EPC-R7300 is intended for prototyping and mass deployment of AGV, AMR, and robotics in healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing and logistics.
The AIR-030’s early samples will be ready in November, while the EPC-R7300 series will be available for order in December, 2022 (Orin NX) and in January, 2023 (Orin Nano).
