Qualcomm has announced their Flight RB5 5G program offering it as a development platform for the future of drones and UAVs. The part they played in the recent showcase flights of NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter on Mars was probably the best tech demo of all time. Their impressive performance showed helping to control an autonomous helicopter from a million miles away. Qualcomm developed Flight program RB5 5G from the ground up with autonomous flight in mind. The platform focuses on technological benefits typically aimed at consumer drone technology, such as 4K video, heterogeneous mobile computing, navigation via visual-inertial odometry (positioning by the use of multiple cameras), and flight assistance – all bundled up in a small and durable package. In this illustration, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter stands on the Red Planet’s surface as NASA’s Perseverance rover rolls away. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech The company is looking to add AI, 5G, and long-range WiFi connectivity to that list. They definitely have the processing products to achieve this, as their SnapDragon 865 already offers an AI processing speed of 15 TOPS (trillions of operations per second). Qualcomm claims this chip is already faster than Apple’s A14 Bionic silicon which brings 11 TOPS to the new iPad AIR. Can I buy a Qualcomm drone today? No. This is not a Qualcomm drone – it’s Qualcomm’s development kit and therfore it will be an OEM product for drone manufacturers only. But would DJI be able to use it? That’s for the US government to decide. Would they want to work with...
Published By: CineD - Wednesday, 25 August, 2021