Sundance joins Digital Catapult’s Machine Intelligence Garage AI/ML incubator

Sundance Multiprocessor Technology Ltd., has joined Digital Catapult’s Machine Intelligence Garage business incubator, in a move that will accelerate and deepen its knowledge and expertise in the deployment of AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) techniques for a diverse range of embedded systems applications.

Sundance is part of an additional, new cohort of 10 early-stage and scaleup companies joining Digital Catapult’s Machine Intelligence Garage providing a range of AI/ML products, platforms and services. In addition to Sundance’s highly efficient and low power consumption embedded platforms optimised for running deep learning algorithms used for performing autonomous navigation and for other general computer vision applications, these companies are working on a range of applications that include video analytics for improved livestock welfare management, solutions for reducing greenhouse emissions, interactive podcasting and neural networking. 

Membership of Digital Catapult’s Machine Intelligence Garage gives Sundance crucial access to the broad range of compute-intensive resources available on Amazon’s AWS Cloud needed for its ongoing development of boards for AI/ML applications. These include Amazon’s AWS RoboMaker, a complete cloud solution for robotics developers to simulate, test, and securely deploy robotic applications at scale, and the full range of Xilinx FPGAs and associated development tools that have been integrated into the AWS Cloud for accelerated custom hardware deployment.

Sundance will utilise these cloud-based resources for the ongoing development of several current AI/ML projects it is involved with, including UK Research and Innovation’s Autonomous Robotic InSpEction (ARISE) project, an Edge AI robotics application. ARISE is an underground mining application that aims to implement autonomous surveys of geotechnical conditions during the normally unproductive period immediately after blasting when workers vacate the mine due to post-blasting fumes and seismic risk. The ARISE project will use Sundance’s VCS1 embedded processor platform that incorporates a Xilinx Zynq MPSoC and has been designed specifically for precision robotics incorporating complex, real-time vision, control, and sensor applications. 

Sundance will use access to the AWS Cloud for accelerating the neural network and machine learning algorithms to enable autonomous robotics control inside a mine without the need to access the cloud.