How to build the Nvidia Jetson Nano Kaya Robot
Follow along as I document my work, life and projects.
- The Nvidia Jetson Nano
- The 3D Printer setup (Creality CR-6 SE & Cura Slicer)
- The Parts you need to build Nvidia’s Kaya Robot
- The build — coming soon
- The software — coming soon
Let’s start building robots. I got into drones early on when DJI still built DIY kits. That led me to build a drone marketplace that has since sunsetted. But lately it hit me again. We’re at the start of a new revolution. Autonomous cars, car rides and electric scooters are getting all the limelight. But actually, the more exciting development is in small autonomous devices. By that I mean delivery robots, service bots and robot vendors to name a few. These devices use the same technology, benefit from the latest developments in AI and can be easy to deploy. They can potentilly scale and be manufactured in the millions globably. Creating heaps of value for society. But considering the size of the opportunity there is relatively few teams working on it.
So let’s start learning some of the basics. Today, a lot of the delivery robots are built using the Nvidia Jetson family. It’s a relatively inexpensive developer board with a built in GPU (128-core NVIDIA Maxwell™ architecture-based GPU — 472 GFLOPS of compute) that only pulls 5 watts. That’s plenty to make onboard decisions for navigation, etc.
Nvidia has also developed an open source stack for building and training robotic platforms. So we will look into that here too. You can join in building the hardware and testing the software with me.
What I will document in this series is a UK guide to developing the Kaya Robot. Since the official documents are a little dated now (not all the suggested hardware is available). The links are also US focussed so here I will share the links to where you can buy the parts in the UK. I will also take lots of pictures, answer questions and might even record some videos. So start today, pick up a Jetson Nano and let's build the Kaya robot as our test platform.
£56 OKDO NVIDIA® Jetson Nano 2GB Development Kit With WiFi Bundle https://fave.co/36gXdMj
£52 RS Components Jetson Nano 2GB Developer Kit without Wi-Fi https://fave.co/2VcVykF
- GPU: 128-core NVIDIA Maxwell™ architecture-based GPU
- CPU: Quad-core ARM® A57
- Video: 4K @ 30 fps (H.264/H.265) / 4K @ 60 fps (H.264/H.265) encode and decode
- Camera: MIPI CSI-2 DPHY lanes, 12x (Module) and 1x (Developer Kit)
- Memory: 4 GB 64-bit LPDDR4; 25.6 gigabytes/second
- Connectivity: Gigabit Ethernet
- OS Support: Linux for Tegra®
- Module Size: 70mm x 45mm
- Developer Kit Size: 100mm x 80mm
The Jetson Nano was first launched in March 2019 priced at £99 for a 4GB version. The 2GB version launched in October 2020 priced at £52. An almost 50% price reduction in roughly 18 months. One day we may well have our own capable personal dog walking bots, delivery bots and service bots.
That’s it for today. Make sure you hit follow so you get notifications when I update the series.
Ben
Better, Cheaper, Faster everyday :)
