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Fanuc and Kawada among companies adopting Nvidia’s new computer

Nvidia has announced the global availability of the Jetson AGX Xavier developer kit, with industrial and manufacturing leaders in Japan among the first to begin using the new system.

FANUC, Komatsu, Musashi Seimitsu and Kawada Technologies will adopt Jetson AGX Xavier in their next-generation autonomous machines.

“Japan is driving the world of robotics in numerous industries – from factory automation to construction to manufacturing,” said Deepu Talla, vice president and general manager of Autonomous Machines at Nvidia. “The country’s most important companies in this space are adopting Jetson AGX Xavier to usher in a new era of robotics.”

Starting with a small computer module capable of up to 32 TOPs (trillion operations per second), The machine is said to deliver the processing capability of a powerful workstation but fit in the palm of a hand. With multiple operating modes at 10W, 15W and 30W, Jetson AGX Xavier has greater than 10x the energy efficiency of its predecessor, says the company.

Jetson AGX Xavier also supports a full software stack for developing and deploying AI applications through the Nvidia JetPack™ SDK, which includes the latest versions of CUDA, cuDNN and TensorRT.

This combination of hardware and software enables companies and developers to quickly develop the next wave of intelligent machines.

Traditional industrial and manufacturing robots have been expensive to program and could only complete fixed, specific actions. However, through deep learning and AI, robotic arms and other equipment become autonomous machines, increasingly flexible and programmable, and able to learn and perform more complex and intelligent tasks.

With dynamic factory reconfiguration and automation for different product lines, companies can deploy them to better meet the changing demands of consumers, translating to lower costs.

“FANUC believes AI and deep learning will continue to optimise factory automation. Technologies such as Nvidia Jetson AGX Xavier will help to reshape manufacturing, making factories more intelligent and adaptable to undertake tasks more efficiently than ever before,” said Kiyonori Inaba, executive managing officer at Fanuc.