[Dprglist] FPGAs in robots

Thu Dec 9 23:39:30 PST 2021

Thanks Carl for sharing your experience and perspective on usage of FPGAs
for robotics.

I have now implemented quadrature decoder and uart and deployed and tested
on ArtyS7-50 with soft core RISC processor MicroBlaze (diagram on left) and
was wondering what other capabilities of the FPGA like DSP slices can be
taken advantage of in an FPGA application and came across this project (Stereo
Vision and LiDAR Powered Donkey Car - Hackster.io
<https://www.hackster.io/bluetiger9/stereo-vision-and-lidar-powered-donkey-car-575769>)
- photo on right

Implementing stereo vision leveraging FPGA capabilities seemed an
interesting use case for robotics.
What do you think?

I think I will continue with some baby steps and possibly implement PID and
LIDAR based localization as I was considering earlier.

Regards.
- Kumar

[image: image.png][image: image.png]

On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 6:03 PM Carl Ott <carl.ott.jr at gmail.com> wrote:

> Kumar - nicely done!
>
> I'm looking forward to comparing your hardware based implementation
> concepts with the traditional microprocessor/ software based
> ones. Sounds like a cool bake off!  As much as I like to build stuff, it
> seems like one can cover more ground by living vicariously through others'
> exploits :-)
>
> I always enjoyed getting FPGA designs to work and work - same could
> probably be said of software, but there's something about a hardware design
> that seems less likely to crash or hang.  And speed - ooo la la!  Back in
> the day It was really something to run 'complicated' logic circuits at 40
> MHz.  Nowadays - you could sample RF straight at the analog amplifier, and
> do everything from there to baseband in digital -> why not - grab an FPGA
> and do multi-protocol SDR. There's probably several FPGA libraries for that
> - maybe even open sourced libraries...
>
> Ping my email if you like and we can catch up sometime.
>
> Meanwhile - looks like I have homework to skim through a video, and
> revisit the difference between Verilog and what I saw years back...
>
> Cool!
>
> Carl
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 5:51 PM Thalanayar Muthukumar <tnkumar at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Wow Carl. You have had a wealth of FPGA experience.
>>
>> Yesterday, I had my first hands on experience with FPGA on the ICEstick
>> following Shawn Hymel’s video and got 5 LEDs on.
>>
>> https://youtu.be/gtkQ84Euyww
>>
>>
>>
>> I have this feeling that possibly 2 channel encoder plus PID plus LIDAR
>> based localization can be implemented on the FPGA.
>>
>> I do not have the necessary FPGA experience to know whether I am in the
>> right track.
>>
>> I used Verilog and open source Apio tool chain as that is what Shawn used
>> in his YouTube video.
>>
>> Love to kick ideas around with you Carl. I have a lot to learn.
>>
>> Regards.
>> - Kumar
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> On Nov 24, 2021, at 5:17 PM, Carl Ott <carl.ott.jr at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> 
>> Hi Kumar,
>>
>> FWIW -
>>
>> I considered myself quite good with FPGAs -
>>
>> Circa 1990 ~ 1997.
>>
>> I coded relatively large (at the time) Xilinx and Altera FPGAs (e.g. 256
>> pins per device and thousands of gates) - and was able to run them at
>> nearly full utilization and max speed over mil-spec temperature ranges -
>> yet maintain pin assignments regardless of design changes...
>>
>> I managed to do that with a mix of functional simulation and static
>> timing analysis tools. At the time, that was using (ASIC focused) Mentor
>> Graphics tools on SUN workstations (with mostly functional FPGA add-on
>> tools)...
>>
>> And then I veered away from that path when I moved to Nokia and learned
>> to "design in
>> PowerPoint" (teams/organizations/products/marketingAndProductLaunchCampaigns)..
>>
>> I'm sure certain bits of that FPGA knowledge remain quite relevant - but
>> - it's probably a safe bet to guess that a few things might have changed a
>> little since then...
>>
>> FWIW - after starting briefly via schematic entry, I quickly migrated to
>> VHDL and highly recommend VHDL or similar language if you're interested. In
>> retrospect, I imagine that coding hardware in VHDL could leverage quite
>> similar / analogous design patterns to coding software in an asynchronous /
>> event driven environment like node.js. That's a hypothesis I'd like to
>> validate at some point...
>>
>> I haven't yet hit a DPRG level robot target where I've seriously
>> considered an FPGA. But I'm very interested to kick ideas around if you're
>> willing...
>>
>> Best,
>> Carl
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 4:46 PM Thalanayar Muthukumar via DPRGlist <
>> dprglist at lists.dprg.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Has anyone used FPGAs in their robots?
>>> I got myself an ICEstick to learn FPGAs and wanted to check if anyone in
>>> the group has experience with FPGAs.
>>>
>>> Regards.
>>> - Kumar
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> DPRGlist mailing list
>>> DPRGlist at lists.dprg.org
>>> http://lists.dprg.org/listinfo.cgi/dprglist-dprg.org
>>>
>>
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