Qualcomm may best be known to smartphone phone fans for their processors powering so many devices. However, the company does get into other areas, sometimes on the back of the same technology powering smartphones. Today they revealed their latest robotics project, the Qualcomm Snapdragon Flight development platform. Qualcomm says the technology will enable manufacturers to build consumer class robots and drones, which they showed off with a reference design for a new 4K flying camera.
Hugo Swart, senior director of product management, announced the new platform and demonstrated Snapdragon Flight with a reference drone at the Qualcomm: Accelerating Robotics event. The event was the culmination of an accelerator program Qualcomm put in place to try to help robotics start-up companies.
Qualcomm Research, one of the company's many divisions, has been building a variety of robots over the years, some flying and some rolling. These started with the Snapdragon Micro Rover that used a smartphone for its brains. The next step after that was the Snapdragon Rover that incorporated computer vision and machine learning for sorting purposes. That robot was expanded to include facial recognition capabilities so it could follow a person. Earlier this year at CES 2015, the Snapdragon Cargo was revealed, a device that added in a “depth-from-stereo” computer vision technique so that the robot could roll up to an object, pick it up, then fly away.
The Snapdragon Flight makes use of a Snapdragon 801 processor, which Qualcomm says is “‘smart' enough to be the brains of a robot.” Qualcomm added in 4K Ultra HD video capabilities and technologies like computer vision, communication, navigation and real-time flight assistance. Qualcomm says they tried to engineer the drone to “reduce the size, weight, and power consumption leading to longer flight times and additional safety.”
source: Qualcomm
