Teradyne Inc. is partnering with fast-growing artificial intelligence (AI) chip-maker Nvidia Corp. to bring AI capabilities to its commercial robots.
The companies have combined software and hardware for an autonomous inspection solution and a fully autonomous pallet jack, which are “two complex use cases with big scalability potential,” Teradyne says in a release.
Teradyne’s Universal Robots (UR) unit, which makes collaborative robots, or cobots, has combined Nvidia’s Jetson AGX Orin and the Isaac Manipulator platform with its own Polyscope X software and its UR5e cobot platform. The company says integrating Nvidia computing into its cobot makes path planning 50-80 times faster. Teradyne is showcasing the AI-powered autonomous inspection solution this week at the NVIDIA GTC global AI conference in San Jose, Calif.
Meanwhile, Teradyne’s autonomous mobile robot company, MiR, has launched a new AI-powered pallet handler, called the MiR1200 Pallet Jack. Also driven by Nvidia’s Jetson AGX Orin module, the MiR1200 Pallet Jack uses 3D vision to identify, pick up and deliver pallets in dynamic and complex environments. The fully autonomous robot can modify its route to avoid obstacles and navigate in and out of tight spaces.
Teradyne Robotics Group President Ujjwal Kumar says the inspection-solution demo from UR and the MiR1200 Pallet Jack are the first in a series of AI offerings that the company has in the works.
“We are working to shape the future of robotics by combining NVIDIA’s state-of-the-art AI platform with Teradyne Robotics’ real-world domain expertise in industrial automation,” Kumar says in the release. “We’re creating the platform for new solutions to previously unsolvable problems.”
Connect With Us
