The underlying framework for controlling autonomous robots and complex automation applications are Operating Systems (OS) capable of scheduling perception-and-control tasks, as well as providing real-time data communication to other robotic peers and remote cloud computers. In this paper, we introduce CyberCortex AI, a robotics OS designed to enable heterogeneous AI-based robotics and complex automation applications. CyberCortex AI is a decentralized distributed OS which enables robots to talk to each other, as well as to High Performance Computers (HPC) in the cloud. Sensory and control data from the robots is streamed towards HPC systems with the purpose of training AI algorithms, which are afterwards deployed on the robots. Each functionality of a robot (e.g. sensory data acquisition, path planning, motion control, etc.) is executed within a so-called DataBlock of Filters shared through the internet, where each filter is computed either locally on the robot itself, or remotely on a different robotic system. The data is stored and accessed via a so-called Temporal Addressable Memory (TAM), which acts as a gateway between each filter's input and output. CyberCortex AI has two main components: i) the CyberCortex AI inference system, which is a real-time implementation of the DataBlock running on the robots' embedded hardware, and ii) the CyberCortex AI dojo, which runs on an HPC computer in the cloud, and it is used to design, train and deploy AI algorithms. We present a quantitative and qualitative performance analysis of the proposed approach using two collaborative robotics applications: i) a forest fires prevention system based on an Unitree A1 legged robot and an Anafi Parrot 4K drone, as well as ii) an autonomous driving system which uses CyberCortex AI for collaborative perception and motion control.

翻译：控制自主机器人与复杂自动化应用的基础框架是能够调度感知-控制任务，并向其他机器人对等节点及远程云端计算机提供实时数据通信的操作系统。本文介绍CyberCortex AI，一种专为支持异构的基于人工智能的机器人及复杂自动化应用而设计的机器人操作系统。CyberCortex AI是一个去中心化的分布式操作系统，它使得机器人能够相互通信，并能与云端的高性能计算机进行交互。来自机器人的传感与控制数据流式传输至高性能计算系统，用于训练人工智能算法，随后这些算法被部署到机器人上。机器人的每项功能（例如传感数据采集、路径规划、运动控制等）都在一个通过互联网共享的、称为“过滤器数据块”的单元内执行，其中每个过滤器既可在机器人本地计算，也可在远端的不同机器人系统上计算。数据通过一种称为“时序可寻址存储器”的机制进行存储和访问，该存储器充当每个过滤器输入与输出之间的网关。CyberCortex AI包含两个主要组件：i) CyberCortex AI推理系统，这是在机器人嵌入式硬件上实时运行的数据块实现；ii) CyberCortex AI训练场，它运行在云端的高性能计算机上，用于设计、训练和部署人工智能算法。我们通过两个协作机器人应用对所提方法进行了定量与定性的性能分析：i) 基于Unitree A1四足机器人与Anafi Parrot 4K无人机的森林火灾预防系统；ii) 利用CyberCortex AI实现协同感知与运动控制的自动驾驶系统。