Chikaku is a custom 6-layer carrier board designed for the NVIDIA Jetson to power robotic and embedded systems. Off-the-shelf carrier boards are often too bulky, lack robust power routing, or omit the specific I/O required for tight robotic enclosures. To solve this, Chikaku splits processing workloads by pairing the Jetson with an onboard STM32H7 microcontroller, which resides on a custom M.2 expansion module. This allows the Jetson to focus on high-level processing like computer vision and planning, while the STM32H7 manages time-critical, low-level tasks like high-frequency motor control loops.

Technical Architecture

To ensure reliable operation in mobile applications, Chikaku features a dual-input Power Distribution Network (PDN). It accepts power from either a 4S Lithium-Polymer battery or a standard USB-C Power Delivery (PD) adapter. An integrated ideal diode circuit handles seamless, zero-drop hot-swapping between these sources to prevent system brownouts, while an onboard Power Management Unit (PMU) regulates stable 5V, 3.3V, and 1.8V rails and charges the battery when USB power is connected.

The physical layout utilizes a 6-layer stackup with dedicated ground reference planes to maintain strict signal integrity for high-speed buses. In a highly compact footprint, the board breaks out four USB 3.0 Type-C ports, a Mini DisplayPort, and three M.2 slots (two A+E Keys for wireless/expansion modules and one B Key for NVMe SSD storage)