Xilinx Partner Sundance Launches VCS-1 Platform
Zynq SoC solution applied to GitHub open source and
As a COTS solution based on PC/104 form factor,
Control and process all ROS-supported robots


Xilinx announced on the 16th that Sundance Multiprocessor Technology, a Xilinx Alliance Partner, has launched the VCS-1 platform.

The VCS-1 is a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solution based on the Zynq MPSoC solution with GitHub open source and the industry standard PC/104 form factor, capable of controlling and processing any ROS (Robot operating system)-supported robot.

Supporting robotics applications that require low power and low latency, the VCS-1 platform offers the option to accelerate specific AI algorithms.

The VCS-1 has been adopted for a grape monitoring robot developed for the European Commission's VineScout project, providing the same processing performance with just 15W instead of a conventional CPU that consumes more than 150W.

“Zynq SoCs have advantages over using a CPU and GPU together for AI acceleration,” said Flemming Christensen, managing director at Sundance. “As an example, you can design custom accelerators in ‘C’ using SDSoC tools that are implemented on top of the Zynq FPGA fabric.”

The VCS-1 adopts the ZU4EV MPSoC with four Arm-A53 Zynqs and an integrated H.265 codec, and has 15x digital I/O ports, 12x analog inputs, and 8x analog outputs on DB9.

It operates as a Linux-based single-board computer with 4x USB3.0, SATA, HDMI, and USB2 ports, and includes a Raspberry Pi I/O header for 28x I/O GPIO. It also supports ROS, OpenCV, Xilinx DPU/SDSoC, MQTT, and PYNQ/Python software.