Robotics Edge Platform Introduction#
The Robotics Edge Platform is a unified, end-to-end solution provided by NXP, designed to accelerate robotics development and deployment at the edge. It brings together critical software components, demos, and industrial-grade features into a single, cohesive package for customers.
Key Highlights#
Integrated Architecture: Combines ROS-based robotics frameworks with Real-Time Edge capabilities, ensuring deterministic performance for industrial and collaborative robots.
Multi-OS Support: Enables flexibility with Linux, Zephyr, and FreeRTOS, alongside a heterogeneous multicore framework for robust real-time operations.
Industrial Protocols: Provides native support for EtherCAT, Modbus, and other essential protocols for factory automation and industrial connectivity.
AI & Multimodal Extensions: Incorporates voice, vision, and multimodal AI features.
Ready-to-Use Demos: Includes example applications to help you quickly evaluate and develop your own ROS 2 projects.
Overview#
The Robotics Edge Platform is an all-in-one solution that accelerates robotics development at the edge. It combines a Yocto-based ROS 2 distribution for i.MX processors with real-time capabilities, industrial protocols, and Matter connectivity.
Upcoming releases will add hardware-accelerated features, NXP-developed ROS 2 nodes, AI/ML packages, and ready-to-use demos—empowering faster, smarter robotics innovation.
Platform Components#
The Robotics Edge Platform is built on several key technologies:
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Robotics Edge Platform │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ ROS 2 Jazzy Distribution │
│ ├─ Motion control and motor control │
│ ├─ Sensor package │
│ ├─ Navigation2, MoveIt2 │
│ ├─ SLAM/Mapping │
│ ├─ Vision (image_pipeline) │
│ └─ Audio (ros_gst_bridge) │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Real-Time Edge │
│ ├─ Industrial Protocols (EtherCAT, TSN, CANopen...) │
│ ├─ Heterogeneous Multicore Support │
│ └─ Preempt-RT Linux Kernel │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ NXP i.MX Linux BSP │
│ ├─ Matter │
│ └─ Linux Kernel │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Hardware Platform │
│ ├─ i.MX 8M Plus (EVK, FRDM) │
│ └─ i.MX 95 (EVK) │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Software Features#
ROS 2 packages include the following:
Core: ROS 2 Jazzy base distribution
Navigation: navigation2, moveit2
SLAM/Mapping: octomap, cartographer
Audio: ros_gst_bridge for GStreamer integration
Vision/Image: image_common, image_pipeline, vision_opencv
NXP-specific enhancements:
Hardware-accelerated multimedia processing
NPU integration for AI/ML workloads
Industrial protocol support
Real-time capabilities
Supported Hardware Platforms#
i.MX 8M Plus - Arm® Cortex®-A53, Machine Learning, Vision, Multimedia and Industrial IoT
i.MX 95 Applications Processor Family: High-Performance, Safety Enabled Platform with eIQ® Neutron NPU
Demo Applications#
The Robotics Edge Platform supports the following out-of-box demo applications:
Waveshare RoARM-M3
i.MX vSLAM
