Inspired by the ‘proper’ Robotic Processing Unit I was curious what a truly ‘Open’ version of that might look like. The CM4 footprint seems to enable modularity so over on the Twisted Fields forum I did a bit of CM4 module research
In 2023 the ‘openness’ always going to be imperfect, RISC-V is going to be ‘more open’ but all the existing available cores have some degree of IP AFAIK. But let’s explore how far we can go towards ‘open’
I’m assuming
- We’re running a ROS2 stack
- Avoiding Kubernetes
- Closer to real-time the better
- Controlling some BLDC
- Preference for boards in Kicad6
- Getting something working is better than being purist about ‘open’
Possible resource includes
- CM4 modules documented here
- Antmicro Scalenode optimised for clustering
- Yocto for CM5
Architecture might look like
- Robotics MCU or CoreV Connected to SPI/Canbus of motor driver(s)
- ROS2 processes split across three or four SBC connected with Gigabit Ethernet
- CV/ AI-Edge on RISC-V/ Ztachip on a Gumstix carrier
- Other processes run on CM4-Carrier-Net devices
Other peripherals