OMAP powered Roomba (via iRobot)
The creator of military robots and house cleaning robots, iRobot, will be teaming up with Texas Instruments to create a slew of new bots powered by TI's OMAP technology. The chip will provide multi-core processing capabilities to fuel the growth of next generation robots. To give you a glimpse at the processing power knoew this, OMAP processors are currently used in many smart phones and tablets such as the Samsung Galaxy product line.
The faster chips will allow robots to be "more intelligent" by adding the ability to handle more sensor inputs. OMAP technology will bring multiple advantages to the robot industry such as, accelerators for multimedia, power and voltage domains, hardware and software for advanced power management systems, wide bus architecture, dual external memory interfaces, and the fastest image interface on the market. Therefore, the robots of tomorrow are promising to be more autonomous and interactive.
The products that are looking to be created out of this partnership are not yet known. However, with TI's credibility and iRobot's experience in the robotics industry, selling more than 7.5 million units, there is sure to be further advancement with this partnership.
See more about robotic innovations in element14's Robotics Group.
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