News

In order to meet the challenges of rising labor costs and an aging population, companies around the world are seeking innovative solutions to optimize resources and remain competitive, making automation more important than ever. In response to the rapid development of the robotics market, Advantech has launched the AFE-R series of products for AMR robot applications: AFE-R360 and AFE-R770. This series of products targets the challenges of robotic applications and provides a full range of solutions from sensor verification, anti-interference, high reliability and integrated AI.

For most AMRs, vision sensors are critical because they enable the robot to avoid collisions with obstacles and adapt to environmental changes during operation. The AFE-R360 supports up to 8 MIPI-CSI lanes for low-latency camera input, and is also equipped with 3 LAN ports and 3 USB-C ports for LiDAR, ToF, and depth cameras. In addition, with a custom-designed camera I/O card, the AFE-R360 can accommodate up to 4 MIPI-CSI or 4 GMSL cameras at the same time. These camera sensors enable AMR users to utilize real images and AI training models for object detection, facilitating "autonomous" object recognition and on-site reactions, rather than just "automatically" avoiding objects through distance sensors. Developing MIPI-CSI drivers is challenging, so Advantech worked with camera suppliers e-Con, Innodisk, and D3 to develop camera drivers on Intel platforms. Through communication and cooperation between the two parties, Advantech successfully adapted MIPI-CSI and GMSL cameras and included all related toolkits in the software package.