AutoCore and Advantech Collaborates with Qualcomm to Launch Next-Generation Robotics Platform at CES

Based on the Qualcomm Dragonwing™ IQ-9075TM platform and Advantech Robot Control System AFE-A503 and AutoCore’s robotics software platform AutoCore.OSTM, the integrated hardware-software platform aims to accelerate intelligent robots from prototype to commercial deployment.

[Las Vegas · CES] — [January 5th, 2026] Advantech and AutoCore, the leading providers of smart mobility and robotics platform solutions, today announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) a collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. to build and launch a next-generation intelligent robotics platform. This platform deeply integrates Advantech industrial grade robotics hardware platform based on the Qualcomm Dragonwing™ IQ-9075 processor—with AutoCore’s production-ready robotics software platform, AutoCore.OSTM. It aims to help global robot developers and enterprises eliminate engineering bottlenecks and accelerate the leap from innovative prototypes to large-scale commercial deployment.

In the process of transforming innovative prototypes into scalable products, many robotics projects are often stalled by "last-mile" engineering problems such as unstable communication, difficulty in hardware-software integration, and a lack of OTA (Over-The-Air) and security capabilities. The collaboration between AutoCore and Qualcomm aims to resolve these obstacles by providing a pre-integrated, pre-verified hardware-software integrated solution.

“At Advantech, we see robotics entering a new phase—where success is no longer defined by prototype performance, but by how reliably and efficiently intelligent robots can scale into real-world deployment,” said Miller, President at Advantech. “By collaborating with Qualcomm Technologies and AutoCore, and through our AFE-A503 robotics control platform, we are delivering an industrial-grade, production-ready foundation that allows robot developers to focus on innovation, while we take care of robustness, lifecycle, and scalability from prototype to mass deployment.”

“Our collaboration with Advantech and Qualcomm Technologies aims to provide a solid, trustworthy foundation for the robotics industry. Our goal is to liberate customers from undifferentiated underlying engineering complexities, allowing them to focus 100% on product differentiation and core algorithmic innovation," said Yang Zhang, CEO of AutoCore.

"Qualcomm Technologies is committed to empowering innovation in robotics through our pioneering AI and connectivity technologies,” stated Anshuman Saxena, Vice President, Product Management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “Our collaboration with Advantech and AutoCore combines our advanced Qualcomm IQ-9075 platform with their commercial ready hardware and production-grade software stack, providing the developer community with a powerful tool that significantly accelerates the development and deployment of next-generation robots."

To visually demonstrate the powerful capabilities of the AFE-A503 platform, AutoCore has developed a reference design for a complete Embodied robot. Based on the AFE-A503 integrated hardware-software platform, the robot integrates a wheeled chassis and two multi-degree-of-freedom robotic arms, capable of:

• Autonomous Navigation and Obstacle Avoidance: Autonomously planning paths and flexibly avoiding dynamic obstacles in complex simulated environments.
• Target Recognition and Localization: Accurately recognizing and locating specific target objects (such as a water bottle on a table) using AI vision algorithms.
• Collaborative Grasping Operations: Moving the chassis to the optimal grasping position, followed by the robotic arms precisely grasping the target object and placing it in a designated area.

This demonstration vividly interprets the vision of AFE-A503: by providing a powerful, out-of-the-box platform, developers can quickly build fully functional intelligent robot prototypes in weeks rather than months, thereby focusing valuable R&D resources on upper-layer applications and algorithmic innovation, greatly accelerating time-to-market.

As intelligent robots transition from experimentation to mission-critical deployment, the industry demands integrated solutions that align AI performance, system behavior, and operational reliability. Advantech AFE-A503 represents a solution-oriented robotics platform that brings together computing, system architecture, and industrial-grade design to support scalable, real-world robotic applications.

• High-Performance Robotics Compute on Qualcomm Dragonwing™ IQ-9075
  Powered by the Qualcomm Dragonwing™ IQ-9075 platform, AFE-A503 delivers up to 100 TOPS of AI performance through a heterogeneous computing architecture combining high-performance CPU, GPU, and AI acceleration. This enables perception, planning, and control workloads to run concurrently on a single robot controller, supporting complex AI inference and real-time decision-making at the edge.
• Robotics-Centric System Architecture
  Designed specifically for robotics, AFE-A503 supports mixed real-time and AI workloads, multi-sensor fusion, and high-bandwidth peripheral connectivity for vision cameras, LiDARs, and robotic peripherals. Its system architecture is optimized for low-latency data paths and deterministic behavior, providing the responsiveness and flexibility required for advanced intelligent robots.
• Industrial-Grade Design for Scalable Deployment
  Built with industrial-grade power delivery, thermal architecture, and system validation, AFE-A503 ensures stable operation under sustained AI workloads and continuous operation scenarios. With long lifecycle availability and global supply support, it enables a smooth transition from prototype development to large-scale, commercial robot deployment.
• Advantech Robotic Suite for Platform-Level Enablement
  Building on the AFE-A503 hardware foundation, Advantech Robotic Suite provides a set of robotics middleware, drivers, SDKs, and integration tools that simplify system bring-up, sensor integration, and AI pipeline deployment. Working alongside AutoCore.OS and the ROS2 ecosystem, Robotic Suite accelerates development workflows and helps robot developers move efficiently from prototype validation to commercial-ready deployment.

The AutoCore software platform encapsulates complex underlying technology stacks into simple, easy-to-use platform services, allowing developers to build stable, efficient, and secure robot applications without getting bogged down in technical details.

• Production-Grade Robotics Software Platform: AutoCore.OS
  AutoCore.OS is based on an innovative "dual-kernel" heterogeneous computing architecture, achieving perfect isolation and efficient collaboration between deterministic real-time tasks (such as millisecond-level motion control) and high-throughput non-real-time tasks (such as AI vision and multi-sensor fusion) on a single chip. At the kernel layer, by introducing a real-time kernel and incorporating the AutoCore EtherCAT Master protocol, it provides microsecond-level control for multi-axis servo systems; in the non-real-time domain based on the Linux kernel, it implements an efficient cross-domain IPC mechanism and provides a complete robotics infrastructure software stack. This includes a commercial-grade high-performance communication protocol stack and injects core capabilities essential for robots from prototype development to commercial mass production, including system-level health management mechanisms, application runtime management frameworks, system diagnostics, data encryption/decryption services, system sleep/wake mechanisms, parameter configuration and calibration mechanisms, lightweight resource isolation and access control sandboxes, and software Over-The-Air (OTA) upgrades. While remaining fully compatible with the ROS2 system, it fundamentally resolves core issues found in open-source ROS 2 solutions under complex network environments and application scenarios—such as communication jitter and uncertainty, poor scheduling performance for complex collaborative tasks, and poor system stability—perfectly bridging the gap between prototype and mass production using open-source ROS2, and providing a predictable, manageable, and highly reliable foundation for commercial robot deployment.
• Software Stack Accelerating Application Development and Deployment
  The platform also provides a series of out-of-the-box and deeply optimized robotics algorithms and framework modules. It features built-in, production-verified Autoware and Nav2 navigation algorithm packages and natively integrates the MoveIt! framework. Developers can quickly implement high-precision autonomous navigation and complex multi-axis robotic arm collaborative control without starting from scratch, allowing them to focus on business logic and scenario innovation, achieving "out-of-the-box readiness and rapid time-to-market."

AutoCore is a global leading provider of smart mobility platform solutions. Since its establishment in 2018, it has provided production-ready, scalable, and highly secure functional safety software platforms for the intelligent automotive and robotics industries. As a national-level specialized and sophisticated "Little Giant" enterprise, AutoCore focuses on solving core challenges from prototyping to commercial deployment, helping partners accelerate product time-to-market. The company's core product, AutoCore.OS, is the industry's first full-stack software platform to receive ISO 26262 ASIL-D functional safety product certification. It adapts to heterogeneous distributed computing architectures and various chip platforms, supports multiple operating systems, and provides developers with comprehensive toolchain support, offering a solid and reliable foundation for Software-Defined Vehicles (SDV) and intelligent robots.

Qualcomm is the world’s leading wireless technology innovator and the driving force behind the development, launch, and expansion of 5G. When we connected the phone to the internet, the mobile revolution was born. Today, our foundational technologies enable the mobile ecosystem and are found in every 3G, 4G, and 5G smartphone. We bring the benefits of mobile to new industries, including automotive, the internet of things, and computing, and are leading the way to a world where everything and everyone can communicate and interact seamlessly.

Advantech is a global leader in IoT intelligent systems and embedded platforms, with the corporate vision of "Enabling an Intelligent Planet." To embrace the trends of edge computing and artificial intelligence, Advantech fully deploys its sector-driven strategy and focus on Edge Computing and Edge AI. In the meantime, Advantech is enhancing its global presence and core competitiveness by integrating its Edge Computing hardware platform, the WISE-IoT software platform, and sector-specific Edge AI solutions with domain expertise.