Nvidia Expands Edge Tech for Robotics, Smart Manufacturing

At its fall 2022 GTC conference, Nvidia announced a series of updates including the launch of its new platform to accelerate the capabilities and safety of edge AI. 

The IGX Platform is designed to advance human-machine collaboration across manufacturing, logistics and health care industries, raising safety standards across these sectors as robotics become an increasingly common part of operations.

Assistive robots in manufacturing and medical spaces are equipped with AI software that gives them a level of spatial awareness – preventing collisions and other potential hazards that come with humans and robots working side by side. Nvidia’s new platform works to enhance this safety feature, using AI sensors in both the robot and its environment to alert workers to potential issues. 

“As humans increasingly work with robots, industries are setting new functional safety standards for AI and computing,” said Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO. “Nvidia IGX will help companies build the next generation of software-defined industrial and medical devices that can safely operate in the same environment as humans.”

The in-built safety capabilities can be customized for different situations and use cases.

Nvidia already has a customer for its IGX platform, with Siemens deploying the software to develop its autonomous factories. Using data gathered from industrial computing and digital twins, the manufacturing conglomerate is training autonomous warehouse robots, with the intention of these machines taking over repetitive and strenuous daily tasks.

“As part of our ongoing collaboration with Nvidia to speed digital transformation, Siemens will bring IGX technologies to our industrial compute portfolio to help reduce repetitive tasks in the factory and better support workers,” said Rainer Brehm, CEO of factory automation at Siemens. “By more closely connecting smart devices on the factory floor and using that data for intelligent machine operation in production, we can increase efficiency and flexibility for our customers.”