News Release
Yaskawa Electric’s Next-Generation Industrial Robot with AI and Autonomy Uses Wind River Linux

ALAMEDA, CA — Apr. 17, 2024 — Wind River®, a global leader in delivering software for mission-critical intelligent systems, today announced that Wind River Linux is being used by Yaskawa Electric Corporation, a leading manufacturer of servo motor, AC drives, and industrial robots, in the development of its new product, MOTOMAN NEXT.

MOTOMAN NEXT is capable of autonomous adaptivity to the environment and can make judgments with advanced AI capabilities. Yaskawa’s new robot is powered by NVIDIA® Jetson Orin™ and Wind River Linux to realize new levels of intelligence and autonomy. It can handle challenging tasks in unstructured environments, driving automation into new application areas that previously were challenging to automate due to the need for human-level perception and judgment capabilities.

“AI is opening exciting new pathways. We are pleased to support the next generation of AI-capable robotics from an industry leader such as Yaskawa in combination with Wind River Linux and NVIDIA Jetson,” said Amit Ronen, Chief Customer Officer, Wind River. “Together with Yaskawa and NVIDIA, we can help teams rapidly innovate in machine learning and AI to deliver more intelligent systems.”

MOTOMAN NEXT can execute tasks based on its judgment of changes in the surrounding environment and the system’s status, including accounting for other robots and peripheral devices. It can perform tasks that previously required human recognition skills and judgment, such as navigating an optimal path to avoid obstacles or sorting and boxing items of varying color and shape, as well as tasks with many variables and uncertain elements. Wind River Linux is used in the MOTOMAN NEXT autonomous control unit, running on NVIDIA Jetson Orin.

A platform for edge AI, embedded, and robotics applications, NVIDIA Jetson provides scalable software, a modern AI stack, production-ready ROS packages, and application-specific AI workflows. It can share AI software and cloud-native workflows while delivering the power-efficient performance required for building software-defined autonomous machines and breakthrough edge AI solutions. The combination of Wind River Linux and the NVIDIA Jetson platform enables advanced-AI edge applications.

As the embedded industry’s leading and most advanced Linux platform,(1) Wind River Linux helps teams develop, deploy, and operate robust, reliable, and secure embedded solutions running on a purpose-built Linux operating system. Wind River Linux offers high stability and security to meet high-performance needs for mission-critical applications. For more information about Wind River Linux, visit www.windriver.com/products/linux.  

About Yaskawa Electric

Yaskawa Electric has always provided support to the leading business across the ages by transforming as “a MOTOR manufacturer”, “an AUTOMATION company” to “a MECHATRONICS company” based on its management philosophy of contributing to the development of society and the welfare of humankind through the performance of its business since the establishment in 1915. We propose the new solution concept “i³-Mechatronics” to realize continuous improvements in customers’ productivity by integrating mechatronics products with utilization of digital data. We strengthen our core businesses of servo motor, controller, AC drives and industrial robots using these core technologies to the full, and evolve mechatronics by the use of digital data. We achieve revolutionary industrial automation and are committed to contributing to solve customers’ business challenges. To learn more, visit at www.yaskawa-global.com.

About Wind River

Wind River is a global leader in delivering software for mission-critical intelligent systems. For more than four decades, the company has been an innovator and pioneer, powering billions of devices and systems that require the highest levels of security, safety, and reliability. Wind River software and expertise are accelerating digital transformation across industries including automotive, aerospace, defense, industrial, medical, and telecommunications. The company offers a comprehensive portfolio supported by world-class global professional services and support and a broad partner ecosystem. To learn more, visit Wind River at www.windriver.com.

(1) VDC Research, The Global Market for IoT & Embedded Operating Systems

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