Kria KR260 – a scalable robotics platform powered with Ubuntu

Today, robotics developers have something to look forward to with the release of AMD Kria™ KR260 Robotics Starter Kit. Robotics is a challenging endeavour. By reducing the barriers to entry on embedding design, AMD aims to accelerate robotics innovations in every industry. The latest addition to the Kria portfolio of adaptive system-on-modules (SOMs) showcases this work.  

Rapid Robotics Deployment at a Compelling Price

The first point to highlight of the Kria KR260 is its seamless path to production deployment with the existing Kria K260 adaptive SOMs. By accelerating the design cycle compared to chip-down design, the Kria SOM portfolio, when combined with Ubuntu offers up to nine-month savings in time to deployment. For robotics companies, this becomes a quick and easy start for all developers with no FPGA expertise required. 

Another key benefit for developers is its low cost. The Kria KR260 Robotics Starter Kit is priced at $349. It reduces market entrance for a platform that delivers more at an affordable price. 

Ubuntu and Kria KR260

In line with its seamless path to production, KR260 developers do not need Linux expertise either. Out-of-the-box, the KR260 fully supports the Ubuntu embedded operating system, providing compatibility with the latest long-term support (LTS) versions of Ubuntu 22.04 from Canonical. This means that developers do not need to struggle with software or hardware components failing to work. They get the latest security and updates from Canonical to ensure deployments in the field are not vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated attackers. This means there is more bandwidth to focus on real applications running on top of a certified, validated and supported standard operating system – that runs from clouds to IoT.

With this, the rich ecosystem of open source robotics projects is also available to KR260 developers. It includes native ROS 2 support, including the upcoming release of ROS 2 Humble Hawksbill. Developers can now rest assured that all the testing suites for ROS 2 will be valid for the KR260, including continuous integration jobs, nightly jobs, packaging jobs, and performance testing. 

Kria Robotics Stack

Developers can also benefit from Kria Robotics Stack (KRS), an integrated set of robot libraries and utilities that use hardware to accelerate the development and commercialization of industrial-grade robotic solutions targeting Kria SOMs. As a result, the low-latency, adaptive computing architecture of Kria SOMs can deliver over 8X better performance/watt and up to 3.5X lower latency compared to competing GPU-based solutions. 

A Certified Board to Get to Market Faster

The Ubuntu Certification of the Kria KR260 brings security and reliable long term support for its users. If you are working with a derivative board you can also access the same level of support with Canonical’s Enablement services at a reduced cost. 

Kria KR260 users can also access Canonical professional services, including SMART START, a comprehensive services package that allows enterprises to bootstrap commercial IoT and robotics products. With SMART START, Canonical experts guide you through some of the most time-consuming aspects of launching an edge device: factory process and containerization, infrastructure development, and risk management. Canonical’s services also allow companies deploying the KR260 to access Canonical enterprise support for Ubuntu. 

Learn more about Canonical’s robotics professional services. 

Wrapping up

All in all, the new Kria KR260 is a scalable and out-of-the-box development platform for robotics that will help you spend less time developing your robotics application. It has all the interfaces and capabilities needed to be up and running in less than an hour. We can’t wait to see what you build with it next! 

Download Ubuntu for Kria SOMs now.

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