Robotics Reliable Power Supply for High-Performance Robots

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Codico GmbH

FAULHABER Drive Systems

Wuxi InfiMotion Technology Co., Ltd.

AI-driven robots are changing the future of robotics by making systems smarter, more adaptable, and autonomous. Autonomous robots, once a topic of futuristic works, are now on their way to mass production.

Humanoid robots are rapidly evolving from conceptual prototypes to practical tools for various industries, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, robotics, and substantial investments from major technology companies. This development is transforming sectors such as healthcare, industrial manufacturing, and personal assistance, thereby positioning humanoid robots as an integral part of the future workforce.

The growth of AI-driven robots is being driven by increasing demands in healthcare and manufacturing, as well as government initiatives. Humanoid robots are expected to offset four percent of the labor shortage in U.S. manufacturing by 2030 by taking on dirty, dangerous, or tedious tasks.

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By 2030, these robots could cover two percent of the global demand for elderly care workers, helping in areas where there is a shortage of caregivers. In sectors such as mining, disaster relief, and the chemical industry, humanoid robots could take over five to 15 percent of hazardous tasks, thereby increasing safety and efficiency.

By 2050, 63 million humanoid robots could be in use in the United States alone. Countries like Japan are relying on caregiver robots for their aging population, while China is expanding production for industrial automation.

The Labor Shortage Promotes Humanoid Robots

The integration of humanoid robots into various industries is driven by technological advancements and the need to address the labor shortage. Companies like Tesla have introduced the Optimus Gen 2.0 — the latest iteration of their humanoid robot, aimed at pushing the boundaries of automation in both industry and caregiving.

Boston Dynamics, known for its robots like Atlas, is capable of performing complex movements and pushing the boundaries of humanoid mobility and real-world applications. The San Diego-based company Ainos has announced a strategic partnership with the Japanese company Ugo to develop a robot with odor detection capabilities. As humanoid robots are expected to play a key role in addressing labor shortages and increasing efficiency across various industries, and significant market growth is anticipated in the coming years, their energy demand will also rise.

AI Hardware Platforms for Humanoid Robots

AI hardware platforms such as the Nvidia Jetson, Qualcomm's Dragonwing IQ9 series processor, and the Synaptics SL1680 provide powerful, energy-efficient computing power essential for real-time perception, motion planning, and decision-making in humanoid robots. Qualcomm's Dragonwing IQ9 series processor is a newly introduced high-performance platform for robotics and industrial applications with long service life. It offers industry-leading power efficiency for edge processing and up to 100 trillion operations per second (TOPS) within a highly integrated, thermally efficient system-on-chip (SoC) that also includes dedicated real-time processing cores to manage the safety-critical routines required for the safe operation of robots in close proximity to vulnerable individuals. The Dragonwing IQ9 series processor from Qualcomm also features a camera ISP (Image Signal Processor) capable of connecting up to 16 high-resolution cameras simultaneously. The SoC can leverage camera and sensor inputs for object detection, object recognition, path planning, and other critical tasks for robot navigation and decision-making. Additionally, the device's dedicated NPU is powerful enough to run language models like Llama2, enabling humans to interact naturally with their robots.

The Synaptics SL1680 is based on a 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A73 CPU, a 7.9 TOPS NPU, a highly efficient, feature-rich GPU, and a multimedia accelerator pipeline. It is ideally suited for home and industrial controls, smart devices, home security gateways, digital signage, displays, point-of-sale systems, and scanners.

New Solutions for the Energy Requirements of SoCs for Humanoid Robots

Sophisticated AI architectures require advanced core power solutions to support their high computational performance and real-time processing. These systems necessitate multi-phase voltage regulation, dynamic power scaling, and low-noise, highly efficient power delivery to ensure performance stability. As AI workloads in humanoid robots become increasingly demanding, power delivery architectures must ensure thermal efficiency, fast power response, and seamless integration with AI accelerators to prevent bottlenecks or overheating.

The core computing unit is the heart of the system, as it performs calculations and determines which specific solutions are required for power rails. High-performance core rails have strict specifications to deliver the power needed by the CPUs, GPUs, and accelerators in the system-on-chip (SoC).

Power Supply Solutions for SoC Core Rails

Conventional solutions for SoC core rails use analog PWM controllers, discrete MOSFETs, and discrete current and temperature sensing circuits (Figure 1). These solutions require numerous external components, driving up costs, reducing reliability in certain applications, and demanding larger PCB space. This can complicate the development of conventional solutions and result in a lack of flexibility and scalability, which are critical requirements for the types of SoCs used in high-performance computing (HPC) applications.

Figure 2 shows a state-of-the-art SoC core power solution with digital multiphase controllers and monolithic DrMOS power stages. The DrMOS integrates the gate driver IC, current sensing circuit, and temperature sensing circuit. This allows for a simpler solution by eliminating multiple external components that would be required in traditional solutions.

The DrMOS is a monolithic design with incredibly high power density, offering precise current sensing and accurate on-die temperature sensing. MPS provides a 22V and a 6V DrMOS portfolio to support single-stage and two-stage power conversion. The MPQ86760, for example, is a DrMOS from the 6V portfolio, well-suited for SoCs used in autonomous driving and infotainment. The MPQ86960, on the other hand, is a DrMOS from the 22V portfolio and can be used in humanoid robots.

Figure 3 shows a DrMOS that, combined with MPS's multi-phase controllers, can supply power rails from 30A to 80A (and even higher under certain conditions). This combination of a DrMOS and a dedicated controller can be used to efficiently regulate the core power rail of the SoC in a humanoid robot while delivering high currents in a compact design.

These digital controllers offer flexibility and scalability, as the number of phases can be configured depending on the current requirements of the respective SoC core rail. Digital controllers do not require external compensation of the feedback loop, simplifying the design process and reducing development time. They also feature non-volatile memory (NVM), allowing register settings to be configured and reconfigured up to 1000 times. Additionally, the controller and DrMOS provide various monitoring and protection functions that can be used to implement system-level telemetry.

SoC Power Supply for Humanoid Robots

Modern robot platforms use either a 48V or a 22V lithium-ion battery. A 48V lithium-ion battery is becoming the standard high-voltage rail for full-sized humanoid robots. MPS provides solutions to efficiently step down both 48V and 22V to deliver the necessary voltage for the core rails.

Figure 3 shows a block diagram of a highly efficient power supply system for a robotics SoC. A battery is routed through the front-end protection to two digital MPQ2967 controllers. Each controller then configures and manages 4 MPQ86960 DrMOS stages in multi-phase configurations. This ensures the supply of four power rails ranging from 30A to 80A. The multi-phase operation improves efficiency, current sharing, and thermal distribution. The controllers can communicate with the SoC via the I²C interface or any other standard interface supported by our controllers. This setup is ideal for high-performance robots requiring a compact and reliable power supply.

The Future of Robotics Requires Powerful Power Supply Systems

The robotics industry is shifting from decentralized controls to centralized high-performance computing platforms. Modern robots use CPUs, GPUs, and AI accelerators to process computer vision, motion planning, and control algorithms in real time. This shift necessitates powerful low-voltage and high-current power supply systems. SoCs used in central data processing require advanced power management solutions, especially for core voltage rails. Traditional power supply solutions are no longer suitable for the next generation of power delivery applications for central computing. With multi-phase digital controllers like the MPQ2967 and DrMOS power stages like the MPQ86960 employed in robot SoC core power applications, scalable, flexible, and compact power supply solutions with high efficiency and fast transient response can be provided.  (mk)

*Thomas Berner is Product Marketing Manager at Codico, Shivani Saravanan is Product Marketing Manager at MPS.