Navigation is the core technology for the AGV, AGV navigation technology are in the third generation now in the market. The first generation is based on rail-mounted magnetic navigation and magnetic strip navigation, the second generation is based on QR navigation, the third generation is based on laser SLAM and SLAM navigation based on machine vision. Considering the cost ,technical maturity, accuracy, these three navigation generations are all used in different products and application areas.The third SLAM navigation adopts trackless navigation, it could do path planning, orientation, driving path flexibly, it suits environment changes, it is the hottest research direction currently.

Compared with the mature laser navigation, visual navigation is a bit lag behind, but it has the advantages on low-cost, strong information acquisitioning ability, high scalability, widely applicability. It is the emphasis of the AGV market, visual navigation only needs to collect the picture’s camera, to process the computing unit and equipped with the AI model ,it could achieve the simplest functions. Visual navigation relies on the processor performance, so it requires higher requirements, NXP I.MX8M Plus processor equips with high efficient visual.

Why should we choose IMX8M Plus to do visual navigation AGV?

Qiyang IAC-IMX8MP-CM SoM based on NXP I.MX8MP Plus processor, it is an embedded hardware which applied to edge computing and robotic vision. It adopts Quad-core Cortex-A53 high performance processor, the frequency is 1.6GHz. The processor is inbuilt with NPU which the computing speed reaches up to 2.3TOPS, it supports diverse AI architecture such as tensorflow-lite, armNN,Open CV, Caffe, etc.

It could equip with binocular vision obstacle avoidance and path guidance algorithm, VSLAM algorithm, special hardware acceleration NPU speeds up vision model training, optimizing, quantification, to build the AGV vision navigation AI system quickly.

The SoM processor has dual image processing unit ISP, it supports dynamic HDR, image enhancement, wide angel fish-eye distortion correction and other functions, it supports dual camera input simultaneously, to achieve stereopsis, to provide the excellent image quality for the AGV vision system.

HD camera rarely owns embedded ISP, the ISP built processor could acquire pictures form camera, it will not need the additional ISP chip on vision system. It reduces the system complexity, and save systematic cost; As i.MX8M Plus processor owns 15 year more lifetime, so the ISP which built into the embedded processor also has the same long product lifetime, it increase vision system’s reliability.

The processor has powerful encoding and decoding capability ,it not only support 1080P60 H.264/5, VP8/9 video decoding, it also supports 1080p60,H.265,H.264 encoding, it could compress and upload the data which collected from AGB front camera.

AGV as the mobile robot, it relies on the battery which built by itself, low-consumption I.MX8M Plus ARM processor is the priority processor for AGV core hardware;i.MX8M Plus SoM owns rich interface resources, dual-Ethernet port, USB3.0,CAN-FD,RS232,RS485 etc, it could connect AGV essential hardware module, such as sensors, HMI, motion control etc; It can support Wi-FI, 5G ,various telecommunication method, it could also control the AGV moving path remotely, to assign tasks.

SoM owns excellent industrial characteristics, the industrial-level components could be running under complex industrial environments; real-time Cortex-M7, the Ethernet controller has TSN, 5G network is also decreasing latency , improving system real-time performance.