ROS 2 / Hardware Acceleration Working Group

22nd meeting of the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (HAWG, https://github.com/ros-acceleration).

The ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group is an open and community-driven robotics group that drives the creation, maintenance and testing of hardware acceleration kernels for optimized ROS 2 interactions over different compute substrates, including FPGAs and GPUs.

For more including source code, check https://github.com/ros-acceleration. Minutes of the meeting available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/185Cy1xjpAOgJygEOnlf5OCgOQTywmF0qgSpS3GiW16Q/edit?usp=sharing

For commercial support on hardware acceleration topics in robotics, refer to https://accelerationrobotics.com.

21st meeting of the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (HAWG, https://github.com/ros-acceleration).

The ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group is an open and community-driven robotics group that drives the creation, maintenance and testing of hardware acceleration kernels for optimized ROS 2 interactions over different compute substrates, including FPGAs and GPUs.

For more including source code, check https://github.com/ros-acceleration. Minutes of the meeting available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/185Cy1xjpAOgJygEOnlf5OCgOQTywmF0qgSpS3GiW16Q/edit?usp=sharing

For commercial support on hardware acceleration topics in robotics, refer to https://accelerationrobotics.com.

20th meeting of the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (HAWG, https://github.com/ros-acceleration).

The ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group is an open and community-driven robotics group that drives the creation, maintenance and testing of hardware acceleration kernels for optimized ROS 2 interactions over different compute substrates, including FPGAs and GPUs.

For more including source code, check https://github.com/ros-acceleration. Minutes of the meeting available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/185Cy1xjpAOgJygEOnlf5OCgOQTywmF0qgSpS3GiW16Q/edit?usp=sharing

For commercial support on hardware acceleration topics in robotics, refer to https://accelerationrobotics.com.

19th meeting of the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (HAWG, https://github.com/ros-acceleration).

The ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group is an open and community-driven robotics group that drives the creation, maintenance and testing of hardware acceleration kernels for optimized ROS 2 interactions over different compute substrates, including FPGAs and GPUs.

For more including source code, check https://github.com/ros-acceleration. Minutes of the meeting available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/185Cy1xjpAOgJygEOnlf5OCgOQTywmF0qgSpS3GiW16Q/edit?usp=sharing

For commercial support on hardware acceleration topics in robotics, refer to https://accelerationrobotics.com.

17th meeting of the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (HAWG, https://github.com/ros-acceleration).

The ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group is an open and community-driven robotics group that drives the creation, maintenance and testing of hardware acceleration kernels for optimized ROS 2 interactions over different compute substrates, including FPGAs and GPUs.

For more including source code, check https://github.com/ros-acceleration. Minutes of the meeting available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/185Cy1xjpAOgJygEOnlf5OCgOQTywmF0qgSpS3GiW16Q/edit?usp=sharing

For commercial support on hardware acceleration topics in robotics, refer to https://accelerationrobotics.com.

Weekly meeting of the RobotPerf (https://robotperf.org/) subproject of the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (https://github.com/ros-acceleration).

RobotPerf is an open reference benchmarking suite that is used to evaluate robotics computing performance fairly with ROS 2 as its common baseline, so that robotic architects can make informed decisions about the hardware and software components of their robotic systems. The group meets weekly at this room and discusses robotics computing architectures and benchmarking across various compute substrates.

Minutes of the meetings are available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/185Cy1xjpAOgJygEOnlf5OCgOQTywmF0qgSpS3GiW16Q.

Weekly meeting of the RobotPerf (https://robotperf.org/) subproject of the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (https://github.com/ros-acceleration).

RobotPerf is an open reference benchmarking suite that is used to evaluate robotics computing performance fairly with ROS 2 as its common baseline, so that robotic architects can make informed decisions about the hardware and software components of their robotic systems. The group meets weekly at this room and discusses robotics computing architectures and benchmarking across various compute substrates.

Minutes of the meetings are available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/185Cy1xjpAOgJygEOnlf5OCgOQTywmF0qgSpS3GiW16Q.

Weekly meeting of the RobotPerf (https://robotperf.org/) subproject of the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (https://github.com/ros-acceleration).

RobotPerf is an open reference benchmarking suite that is used to evaluate robotics computing performance fairly with ROS 2 as its common baseline, so that robotic architects can make informed decisions about the hardware and software components of their robotic systems. The group meets weekly at this room and discusses robotics computing architectures and benchmarking across various compute substrates.

Minutes of the meetings are available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/185Cy1xjpAOgJygEOnlf5OCgOQTywmF0qgSpS3GiW16Q.

15th meeting of the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (HAWG, https://github.com/ros-acceleration).

We discussed the Robotics MCU (robo-v-mcu) project, RobotPerf benchmarking updates and REP-2014 contributions.

For more including source code, check https://github.com/ros-acceleration. Minutes of the meeting available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/185Cy1xjpAOgJygEOnlf5OCgOQTywmF0qgSpS3GiW16Q

00:00 Welcome
03:05 Updates on Robotics MCU project (robo-v-mcu)
10:45 Updates on RobotPerf, robotics computing benchmarking suite
32:45 REP-2014 review

For more including commercial support on hardware acceleration topics in robotics, refer to https://accelerationrobotics.com.

This is the weekly meeting of the RobotPerf (https://robotperf.org/) subproject of the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (https://github.com/ros-acceleration). We discussed the group organization, made intros and went through the tools and the overall architecture for benchmarking.

00:00 Welcome
00:16 Introductions
10:00 Discussion
17:50 Walkthrough on a first benchmark example with RobotPerf

RobotPerf is an open reference benchmarking suite that is used to evaluate robotics computing performance fairly with ROS 2 as its common baseline, so that robotic architects can make informed decisions about the hardware and software components of their robotic systems. The group meets weekly at this room and discusses robotics computing architectures and benchmarking across various compute substrates.

RobotPerf is a subproject within the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (or HAWG for short), an open and community-driven robotics group that drives the creation, maintenance and testing of hardware acceleration kernels on top of open standards for optimized ROS 2 and Gazebo interactions over different compute substrates, including FPGAs and GPUs. The group meets monthly and discusses topics and subprojects around hardware acceleration.

Minutes of the meetings are available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/185Cy1xjpAOgJygEOnlf5OCgOQTywmF0qgSpS3GiW16Q.

14th meeting of the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (HAWG).

We reviewed the progress made over 2022, reported on the current status of the group activities, and discussed our goals for 2023. We also touched on the strategic projects spearheaded by the Working Group including RobotPerf, Robotics MCU (robo-v-mcu) and the Robotics Processing Unit (RPU).

For more including source code, check https://github.com/ros-acceleration. Minutes of the meeting available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/185Cy1xjpAOgJygEOnlf5OCgOQTywmF0qgSpS3GiW16Q

00:00 Welcome
03:24 2022 progress review and dissemination report
10:14 Updates on Robotics MCU project (robo-v-mcu)
17:08 Updates on RobotPerf, robotics computing benchmarking suite
27:36 WG goals for 2023
29:47 Q&A

For more including commercial support on hardware acceleration topics in robotics, refer to https://accelerationrobotics.com.

Twelfth meeting of the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (HAWG).

We discussed a) Updates on the Robotic Processing Unit and Robotics MCU projects and b) discussion around standardization efforts. Particularly REP-2008, REP-2014 and and RobotPerf. The session also includes a guest talk provided by Piotr Rybicki and Adam Dabrowski from Robotec.ai telling us about their recent work around the RobotecGPULidar, a cross-platform (Windows and Linux), C/C++ library for simulating LiDARs on CUDA-enabled GPUs, accelerated by RTX cores if available.

For more including source code, check https://github.com/ros-acceleration. Minutes of the meeting available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/185Cy1xjpAOgJygEOnlf5OCgOQTywmF0qgSpS3GiW16Q

00:00 Welcome
01:23 Updated Robotic Processing Unit (RPU) mechanical design
03:27 Updates on Robotics MCU project
07:57 RobotPerf, benchmarking suite to evaluate robotics computing performance
14:25 Standardization effort updates
32:50 REP 2008 vote result
33:33 Guest talk: RobotecGPULidar, Adam Dabrowski
49:13 Q&A

For more including commercial support on hardware acceleration topics in robotics, refer to https://accelerationrobotics.com.

Twelfth meeting of the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (HAWG).

We discussed a) Updates from ROSCon and IROS on hardware acceleration, b) the Robotic Processing Unit, updates and block diagram, c) Standardization efforts in hardware acceleration updates, REP-2008 and REP-2014, d) 2022 Hardware Acceleration Report in Robotics 9, e) RobotPerf, a consortium of robotics leaders from academia, research labs, and industry whose mission is to build fair and useful robotics benchmarks that provide unbiased evaluations of robotics computing performance for hardware, software, and services—all conducted under prescribed conditions.

For more including source code, check https://github.com/ros-acceleration. Minutes of the meeting available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/185Cy1xjpAOgJygEOnlf5OCgOQTywmF0qgSpS3GiW16Q

00:00 Welcome
01:30 Updates from ROSCon and IROS on hardware acceleration
08:15 Standardization efforts in hardware acceleration updates, REP-2008 and REP-2014
15:34 Robotic Processing Unit (RPU) and Robotics MCU updates
17:19 2022 Hardware Acceleration Report in Robotics
19:45 RobotPerf
19:45 Guest talk: RobotPerf, Benchmarking Robotic Systems
46:50 Q&A

For more including commercial support on hardware acceleration topics in robotics, refer to https://accelerationrobotics.com.

Tenth meeting of the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (HAWG).

We discussed a) new reference hardware platform and b) ROS 2 hardware acceleration stack. We also covered a collaboration between researchers from Acceleration Robotics and Harvard University on systems architecture and ROS with “RobotCore: An Open Architecture for Hardware Acceleration in ROS 2 1” (paper). Shortly, RobotCore is a hardware acceleration framework for ROS and ROS 2 that helps build custom compute architectures for robots, or robot cores, which make robots faster, more deterministic and power-efficient. Simply put, it provides a development, build and deployment experience for creating robot hardware and hardware accelerators similar to the standard, non-accelerated ROS development flow.

For more including source code, check https://github.com/ros-acceleration. For more regarding ROBOTCORE, refer to https://accelerationrobotics.com/robotcore.php.

00:00 Welcome
00:29 Intros
05:17 Hardware Acceleration in Robotics Newsletter
06:30 Robotic Processing Unit (RPU)
11:21 New reference hardware platforms
11:40 Kria KR260 Robotics Starter Kit
14:02 Other hardware platform support added
17:52 ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Stack
23:57 ROBOTCORE, An Open Architecture for Hardware Acceleration in ROS 2
29:51 ROBOTCORE vs ROS default performance
31:39 ROBOTCORE supports ROS and ROS 2
32:43 ROBOTCORE for multi-platform production-grade ROS Yocto support (REP 2000)
34:34 ROBOTCORE for ROS 2 type adaptation (REP 2007)
36:48 ROBOTCORE hardware acceleration architecture and conventions in ROS 2 (REP 2008)
37:51 ROBOTCORE for ROS 2 type negotiation (REP 2009)
40:45 ROBOTCORE Perception
44:46 ROBOTCORE vs NVIDIA Isaac ROS, 3.5x speedup in ROS 2 graph
45:53 ROBOTCORE vs NVIDIA Isaac ROS, 6x performance-per-watt improvement
46:39 ROBOTCORE vs NVIDIA Isaac ROS, 30x speedup in perception Harris filter
47:57 ROBOTCORE vs NVIDIA Isaac ROS, 500x latency improvement in robot perception Node
50:55 Q&A


For a discussion about this meeting, refer to https://discourse.ros.org/t/hardware-acceleration-wg-meeting-10/25852.

Ninth meeting of the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (HAWG).

We touch on a) ROS 2 Humble transition and b) analysis and visualization of the ROS 2 flow. As part of the meeting, we had Christophe Bourque Bédard telling us about extensions to `ros2_tracing` with the analysis and visualization of the flow of messages across distributed ROS 2 systems. Their method detects one-to-many and many-to-many causal links between input and output messages, including indirect causal links through simple user-level annotations, providing valuable timing and scheduling information to further study and improve the any ROS 2 system. This is very valuable for hardware acceleration purposes.

For more including source code, check https://github.com/ros-acceleration.

00:00 Welcome
00:20 Intros
06:15 Working group growth
11:03 Acceleration Robotics sponsoring the HAWG
13:00 REP 2000: ROS 2 Releases and Targeted Platforms, Yocto/OpenEmbedded
17:53 REP 2007: Type adaptation
18:53 REP 2008: Hardware Acceleration Architecture and Conventions
20:18 REP 2009: Type negotiation
25:10 Christophe Bourque Bédard, FogROS 2: Message Flow Analysis with Complex Causal Links for Distributed ROS 2 Systems
51:05 Q&A


For a discussion about this meeting, refer to https://discourse.ros.org/t/hardware-acceleration-wg-meeting-9/25499.

Eighth meeting the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group.

We discuss the group's progress during the last month showing how updates of REP-2008 to reflect cloud extensions, discuss ROS 2 perception Nodes performance using AMD KV260 and NVIDIA Jetson Nano and discuss how benchmarking results hint that FPGAs obtain 500x performance than GPUs.

The session also includes a guest talk provided by Jeffrey Ichnowski from the RISE lab and AUTOLAB at the University of California at Berkeley, which together with his team led “FogROS 2: An Adaptive and Extensible Platform for Cloud and Fog Robotics Using ROS 2”. This work led to ROS VSLAM (ORB-SLAM2) latency reductions of 50%, grasp planning optimizations going from 14s to 1.2s, and motion planning speedups of 28x.

For more including source code, check https://github.com/ros-acceleration.

00:00 Welcome
00:30 Intros
03:07 Ultra96-v2 port status report
06:20 ROSCon 2022 Hardware Acceleration Workshop
08:05 Robotic Processing Unit update
09:45 ROS 2 perception Nodes performance benchmarking
16:45 REP-2008 cloud extensions
21:55 Jeffrey Ichnowski, FogROS 2: An Adaptive and Extensible Platform for Cloud and Fog Robotics Using ROS 2
52:13 Q&A

For a discussion about this meeting, refer to https://discourse.ros.org/t/hardware-acceleration-wg-meeting-8/25147.

Seventh meeting the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group. We discuss the group's progress during the last month showing how ROS 2 perception pipelines run in GPUs and FPGAs, comparing results. We review the methodology for ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration and REP-2008 and then discuss a new subproject of the group: the Robotic Processing Unit (RPU). The session will also includes a guest talk provided by Hyunjong Choi who tells us about how although ROS 2 claims to enhance the real-time capability, ensuring predictable end-to-end chain latency still remains a challenging problem. To address it, their group proposes a new priority-driven chain-aware scheduler for the ROS 2 wherein callbacks are prioritized based on the given timing requirements of the corresponding chains so that the end-to-end latency of critical chains can be improved with a predictable bound.

For more including source code, check https://github.com/ros-acceleration.

00:00 Community contributions and group's progress
05:28 Hardware acceleration integration in ROS 2 Humble progressing
05:56 REP-2008 update
10:30 Hardware accelerated ROS 2 perception pipelines
18:50 ROSCon 2022 Hardware Acceleration Workshop
22:25 Robotic Processing Unit (RPU)
27:32 PiCAS: New Design of Priority-Driven Chain-Aware Scheduling for ROS 2
52:20 Q&A

For a discussion about this meeting, refer to https://discourse.ros.org/t/hardware-acceleration-wg-meeting-7/24603/1.

Sixth meeting the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group where we discuss a methodology for ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration that has been tested in various commercial solutions for hardware acceleration (including Xilinx’s and Nvidia’s). The session will also includes a guest talk provided by Christian Lienen who tell us about a hardware-accelerated ROS 2 executor and his novel approach that introduces an FPGA-accelerated event-based ROS 2 executor which schedules callbacks of ROS 2 nodes and utilizes a reconfigurable slot model and partial runtime reconfiguration to load hardware-based callbacks on demand.

For more including source code, check https://github.com/ros-acceleration.

0:00 Welcome and agenda
00:50 acceleration_examples package
03:50 Methodology for ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration
27:25 Event-Driven Programming of FPGA-accelerated ROS 2 Applications
54:53 Q&A

For a discussion about this meeting, refer to https://discourse.ros.org/t/hardware-acceleration-wg-meeting-6/24207.

Fifth meeting of the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (HAWG) where we focus on reviewing progress the group made during 2021, including the presentation of new objectives for 2022. We also touch on recent updates over the last few weeks and then enjoy a guest talk from professor Emad Samuel Malki Ebeid who told us about his research using ROS 2 in applications leveraging Drones for Infrastructure Inspections and Interactions and how hardware acceleration is helping them in their endeavours.

Due to technical difficulties, the first part of the meeting was NOT recorded but all the information is available in the minutes (https://docs.google.com/document/d/185Cy1xjpAOgJygEOnlf5OCgOQTywmF0qgSpS3GiW16Q).

Fourth meeting of the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (HAWG) where we focus on reviewing the progress the group has made recently around various topics including #9 Testing and benchmarking methodology for acceleration kernels, #10 Survey the community interests on acceleration for ROS 2 and Gazebo or #1 Ultra96-v2: Add a new community support board, among others. We also had a guest talk from Shaoshan Liu, PerceptIn's founder and chairman who shared with us his view on hardware acceleration for robotics applications.

For more including source code, check https://github.com/ros-acceleration.

0:00 Welcome and agenda
00:40 Newcomer's intro
05:36 Working group progress review
06:30 Testing and benchmarking methodology for acceleration kernels
10:45 Adaptive ROS 2 Nodes
18:00 Survey the community interests on acceleration for ROS 2 and Gazebo
23:12 Quick update on Ultra96v2 port
24:40 Guest talk: Shaoshan Liu, FPGA-based robotic computing
44:29 Q&A

For a discussion about this meeting, refer to https://discourse.ros.org/t/hardware-acceleration-wg-meeting-4/22972.

Third meeting of the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (HAWG) where we reviewed in more detail the hardware acceleration conventions (REP 2008 PR) and the progress in porting the current infrastructure to the Ultra96v2 board. We also enjoyed a guest talk from researcher Sabrina M. Neuman, who told us about her research around a design methodology for domain-specific accelerators parameterized by robot morphology (robomorphic computing).

For more including source code, check https://github.com/ros-acceleration.

0:00 Welcome and agenda
00:43 Newcomer's intro
07:20 Hardware acceleration in robotics news
08:05 REP-2008 review
22:36 Recap of ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration WG progress
23:36 Simplifying ROS 2 embedded flows with colcon extensions
24:26 Testing and benchmarking methodology for acceleration kernels
25:05 Ultra96-v2: Progress adding a new community supported board
28:19 Robomorphic computing
39:00 Q&A

For more on REP 2008 PR, check out https://github.com/ros-infrastructure/rep/pull/324. For a discussion about this meeting, refer to https://discourse.ros.org/t/hardware-acceleration-wg-meeting-3/22535.

Second meeting of the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (HAWG) where we review the open architecture that Xilinx contributed to the ROS community. We also look at additional architectural possibilities through Xilinx's Kria Robotics Stack (KRS), touch on a few acceleration use cases and cover the recipe for adding new boards to the community. We wrap up enjoying a guest talk from Christian Lienen and Marco Platzner, from Paderborn University, who shared with us their research on reconfigurable computing and parallel architectures.

For more including source code, check https://github.com/ros-acceleration.

0:00 Welcome and agenda
02:57 Recap of ROS 2 HAWG progress - resources
05:03 Recap of ROS 2 HAWG progress - architecture
06:06 Kria Robotics Stack (KRS)
10:22 Adding new boards to the HAWG
14:30 ROS 2 hardware acceleration use case, a simple publisher acceleration
21:00 ReconROS, flexible hardware acceleration for ROS 2 applications
46:50 Q&A

For a discussion about this meeting, refer to https://discourse.ros.org/t/hardware-acceleration-wg-meeting-2/21789.

In this first meeting of the ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (HAWG) we provided introductions, remarked the objectives of the group and presented the initia architecture. A few examples of acceleration were provided with ROS 2 Nodes obtaining a 3x acceleration by using some simple HLS pragmas to optimize the dataflow.

For more including source code, check https://github.com/ros-acceleration.

0:00 Introduction
12:25 Objectives, rationale and hardware reference platforms
16:40 Initial hardware acceleration architecture
22:10 Short demonstration
26:44 Community hardware platforms
29:48 Q&A
43:00 Final remarks


For a discussion about this meeting, refer to https://discourse.ros.org/t/announcing-the-hardware-acceleration-wg-meeting-1/20826.