Congatec previews modular robotics platforms

Congatec on May 19 used a published Q&A to make a specific pitch to robotics developers: build the robot around a modular compute layer, not a fixed board design. The company framed computer-on-modules, or COMs, as a way to keep industrial and mobile robots adaptable as AI workloads, sensor demands and software stacks change. Claire Liu, congatec’s senior market segment manager for robotics, said current robotic platforms already have to combine real-time control with vision, lidar and AI processing, while future systems will need to support more complex autonomous tasks. (roboticstomorrow.com) The company’s argument centers on a familiar embedded-systems tradeoff. Off-the-shelf single-board computers can speed development, Liu said, but may not match the interface and form-factor needs of a specific robot. (congatec.com) Full-custom boards can be optimized for one design, she said, but are harder to scale, revise or reuse across multiple products. ### Why is congatec arguing for modules instead of fixed robot boards? Claire Liu said the technical load on robots has expanded from basic motion control to simultaneous processing of multi-axis control, 2D and 3D camera or lidar feeds, AI inference and simultaneous localization and mapping, or SLAM. She said that makes scalability, security, product lifetime and return on investment more important design constraints than in earlier robot generations. (roboticstomorrow.com) Congatec’s robotics materials say its computer-on-modules package the CPU, GPU, memory, Ethernet and other PC functions on a swappable module, while application-specific customization moves to a separate carrier board. That split lets developers keep the robot-specific I/O and mechanics while changing the compute block as requirements change. (roboticstomorrow.com) ### What does “future-proof” mean in this context? Congatec says exchangeable modules let developers upgrade existing robot designs “with a simple module change” rather than redesigning the full system. The company says that approach can support product-family scaling, newer processor generations and longer hardware life without altering the broader system design. That matters because congatec is positioning robotics as an edge-AI problem as much as a control problem. (roboticstomorrow.com) Its current product and market pages describe modules that scale from low-power Arm-based processors with NPUs to higher-performance x86 designs with integrated AI engines, targeting robotics and industrial automation workloads. ### Where do security and edge deployment fit in? Claire Liu said the next design challenge is not only higher performance but secure and scalable system design. (congatec.com) In the Q&A, she presented modular architecture as a way to avoid being locked into either generic boards with limited interfaces or full-custom designs that are costly to revise. Congatec’s robotics page also ties that approach to industrial deployment conditions. The company says its robotics ecosystem supports industrial temperature ranges from minus 40 to plus 85 degrees Celsius, resistance to shock and vibration, passive cooling and sealed systems with high IP ratings for harsh environments. ### How does ROS and AI software support enter the picture? (congatec.com) The May 19 Q&A was tagged by RoboticsTomorrow with “ros,” “edge computing” and “robotics computing,” placing the discussion in the software environment used by many robotics developers. The article itself focused more on architecture than on a product launch, but it linked modular hardware choices to the need to support evolving AI and robotics software stacks over time. (roboticstomorrow.com) A separate congatec robotics case study shows how the company has previously tied its modules to open robotics development environments. Intel Labs China’s HERO platform combined Intel heterogeneous processors, the OpenVINO AI toolkit and software libraries for localization, navigation, planning and human-robot interaction, with congatec COM Express modules providing scalable compute options. (congatec.com) ### What is congatec asking robot makers to do next? Congatec’s current robotics materials direct developers toward a design model built around exchangeable modules and custom carrier boards rather than monolithic boards. The company’s public robotics pages and May 19 Q&A position that as the route for teams building industrial, service and mobile robots that need AI acceleration, edge processing and longer upgrade paths. (congatec.com) (roboticstomorrow.com)