Small But Powerful Processor Designs May Go Head-to-head in Robots

(Business News & Technology News, 28 Aug 2008)

Application processor vendors fight for their share of the large mobile handset space. There is an x86 versus ARM (Advanced RISC Machine) battle taking place in the ultra-mobile device (UMD) market. A similar fight could be on the horizon of the market for robots and robotic devices.

Most of the money for robotics goes into the military and space exploration segments today, but according to ABI Research the consumer market will be the largest robotics segment over the long term.

"The challenge in personal robotics engineering is keeping costs low," explains ABI Research principal analyst Philip Solis. Part of that is to fit complex software into as small an ARM processor as possible, with even lower-cost ARM processors handling subsystems of the robot."

An alternate way to get more processing power at little to no cost is to use a nearby PC to act as an external "brain", communicating with the robot via Wi-Fi. However this PC would have to be actively running whenever the robot was in use, which could be impractical or undesirable. Complete autonomy for the robot is preferable, and for that, powerful yet low-cost processors are needed.

"We could see x86-based processors such as Intel's Atom competing against various ARM-based solutions," says Solis. "These processors are on their way to ramping up in mobile devices and in home consumer electronics, and will be applicable to lower-cost personal robotics as well. As shipments of such processors grow, their falling prices would make them increasingly attractive. We would likely see very small, lower-power x86 processors used as the main processors, alongside ARM processors."

Click here for more information on ABI Research