Robotics development platform: Infineon Mobile Robot (IMR)
Get a head start on the development of your robot with Infineon's robotics development platform, powered by our state of the art hardware and software
The Infineon Mobile Robot, or IMR for short, is a robotics development platform that demonstrates the latest that Infineon offers for the robotics application. Whether you are shopping for one specific sub-system/functional block, or looking to build an entire system with Infineon, we have you covered with our powerful, convenient, and efficient hardware and software solutions. The below windows will help to guide you to the information most helpful for your expertise level.
Interested in seeing Infineon's solutions for robotics in action? Now you can, with our robotics development platform, the Infineon Mobile Robot (IMR) including hardware and software packaged into demo boards, design files, user guides, references, and more to support your designs. Experiment, innovate, and accelerate with IMR from Infineon.
Acting as the brain, the 5 V input voltage main control board is the central control unit of the robot, handling all necessary CAN communication. This includes communications such as motor speed to the inverters, and lighting effects to the sensor LED boards. In addition, the implemented SBUS interface is designed to be used with FrSky remote controls, enabling truly next level control of the robot. All of these features are made possible by Infineon's XMC4700 144 MHz microcontroller based on Arm® Cortex®-M4, featuring up to 2 MB Flash, 352 kB of RAM, 100 - 196 pins, 6 x CAN nodes, 4 x 12-bit ADC, 18 input channels, 4 x parallel sampling and conversion, 6 channel USIC (configurable to SPI, UART, IIC, IIS), and much more.
Meanwhile, the power distribution solution converts and directs power where it needs to go, with extremely low power losses, and current measurement for all six 5 V output side channels. The solution, which operates as an interleaved buck converter with four phases and handles up to 80 V input voltage, also features a power controller for individual sleep modes, high side switches with diagnosis and protection functions, and a high speed CAN transceiver.
Our motor control solution helps to put the 'mobile' in the 'Infineon Mobile Robot' (IMR). The high efficiency and small form factor solution controls the motors that allow the robot to move around and perform the tasks that it needs to perform. Infineon's expertise in this area is best demonstrated by our MOTIX™ IMD701A fully programmable motor controller, which combines our XMC1404 microcontroller and MOTIX™ 6EDL7141 3-phase gate driver IC, drastically reducing BOM and enabling more compact designs. On top of this, it also offers maximum flexibility to use different MOSFETs in the inverter stage, thus allowing fine tuning of the drives depending on your needs.
Outside of hardware, Infineon also offers you the accompanying software. In the case of IMR, it operates with an SVPWM FOC algorithm at 20 kHz control frequency with three-phase low side current measurement, sensored implementation using POSIF, and cascaded control of torque with the inner loop and speed with the outer loop.
Perhaps the most critical of robotics subsystems, the BMS must be safe and reliable so that the batteries, and in turn the robot, do not experience failure. The BMS solution used in the IMR demonstrates Infineon’s application leadership, leveraging our technology, expertise, and commitment to safety. This solution for 12S battery cells, led by our TLE9012DQU Li-ion battery monitoring and balancing IC, features advanced cell monitoring and balancing, cutting edge temperature management, the latest safety functionality including SoC and SoH, an extensible and non-blocking software layout, and data communication via CAN. Furthermore, the 44.4 V nominal voltage solution, with a voltage range between 30 V and 50.4 V and a charging and discharging rate of 1 C & 5 C, is delivered in a modular design by combining a power board and a controller board, with the required software, resulting in true flexibility. The IMR uses two modular BMS solutions, supporting hot-swapping of the batteries, meaning that the robot never has to be powered off.
Unlike human eyes, the IMR takes advantage of Infineon's REAL3™ hybrid Time-of-Flight (hToF) high-resolution camera solution, which combines spot and flood illumination for next generation depth sensing and 3D scene understanding. This one small form factor 31 mm x 16 mm x 8 mm camera solution can cover both high accuracy and low compute simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) and high definition advanced obstacle avoidance. When compared to legacy solutions such as LDS for SLAM, which is usually around 120 mm x 85 mm x 60 mm and SL for obstacle avoidance, at around 280 mm x 40 mm x 30 mm, a front mounted hToF camera allows for 30% thinner vacuum cleaning robots, saving valuable space.
Need more reasons to choose hToF for your next design? For obstacle detection, compared to a simple structured light (SL) solution, hToF offers up to 300,000 depth points of resolution, allowing it to detect smaller objects, a 110° field of view, which means faster navigation with no blind spot, and can even work in the dark using IR data. The solution is also a solid-state camera with no moving parts, meaning no wear and tear.
Similar to how humans can feel what their bare feet are standing on, the IMR can use downward facing radar detection, which classifies floor type using a neural net, to detect the floor type. The IMR uses Infineon's XENSIV™ BGT60TR13C 60 GHz radar sensor, which is part of the Connected Sensor Kit (CSK), KIT_CSK_BGT60TR13C. The neural net also features datasets and models for both indoor and outdoor environments so that you can customize your robot to your exact use case.
This evaluation kit also contains a Rapid IoT connect developer board, which contains the ultra-low-power dual-core 32-bit PSoC™ 6 MCU based on Arm® Cortex®-M4/M0+ and the ultra-low power single-chip AIROC™ CYW43012 Wi-Fi/Bluetooth® connectivity combo, perfect for rapid prototyping. The kit also features micro-USB connection at 5 V input voltage, and a small form factor of 22.5 mm x 63 mm x 30 mm.
However, since the IMR is designed for quick testing and evaluation, one of the most exciting features of the CSK is the wealth of code examples available in ModusToolbox™. These examples, combined with the Rapid IoT connect board and the other plug-and-play systems of the IMR, make development truly fast and efficient.
