Development of System-on-Chip for Automation and Robotics in Fault Tolerant Applications

Technology advances in electronics miniaturization has given a huge performance boost to fault tolerant applications like spacecrafts. Automation of activities and robotic capabilities are an upcoming major requirement in many such applications, allowing them to work economically while providing a versatile suite of reliable services. To provide the necessary computational complexity in a miniaturized scale, System-on-Chips (SoCs) are the most suitable solution. There are numerous challenges in economically developing SoCs for fault tolerant applications owing to their strict constraints and utmost focus on reliability. This paper brings out the challenges in developing an SoC for automation and robotics suitable for fault tolerant applications, and approaches adopted to overcome them towards successful realization of the device. The device is fabricated in SCL's 180nm CMOS technology and passed all functional and parametric tests.