Dear SeeedStudio Team,
I am writing on behalf of Team Swift from Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology (GIKI), Pakistan. We are reaching out to request your sponsorship of a Jetson Orin NX module to support our participation in the SUAS (Student Unmanned Air Systems) challenge.
Team Swift has a strong track record of success, having achieved 7th place out of about 60 teams from around the world in the 2024 SUAS challenge and winning the prestigious Dawn Jaeger Award in 2023. Our dedication to advancing unmanned aerial systems technology has been recognized through these accomplishments.
We previously used the Jetson Nano but encountered several limitations:
- The Nano’s GPU performance is significantly lower than other units. This translates to barely 4-5 inferences per second in the best case, dropping to 1-2 inferences when the module heats up. Competition requirements are much higher, with most teams achieving at least 24-28 fps.
Additionally:
- Our in-house convolutional neural network faced hardware limitations, PyTorch compatibility issues, and severe performance problems.
- Quantization for color classification was impractical, adding 250ms to preprocessing.
- Reading frames from the camera was slow, with GStreamer providing only 20-25 fps without preprocessing.-
- Our drone control command thread requires dedicated processing, but the quad-core CPU does not provide enough threads.
- The Nano carrier board’s tight voltage range (4.75V to 5.25V) complicates power supply with LiPos, which experience significant voltage drops and fluctuations.
- The CPU is underpowered, taking 6.5 hours to compile OpenCV.
The advanced capabilities of the Jetson Orin NX will significantly enhance our project, enabling us to optimize our autonomous drone systems and maintain healthy command threads.
Your sponsorship will empower us to compete at the highest level and provide invaluable learning opportunities for our team.
We hope you will consider our request and extend your support to Team Swift. Thank you for considering our proposal.
Warm regards,
Safwan Yameen
Team Swift, GIKI
Email: [email protected]