Qualcomm Looking to Build Ultimate Drone

Given the conversation around AMBA, GPRO, and just drones in general lately, I thought this article from Wired Magazine might be of interest:

IN RECENT YEARS, a whole lot of high-end Android phones have been built around Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 series SoCs (system on a chip). There’s a reason why it’s called a system on a chip: It’s a tiny piece of silicon with a multi-core processor, a graphics-processing engine for everything from games to 4K video to photos, components that help you squeeze more out of your battery, GPS and wireless radio, display drivers for high-res screens, and all the brains and guts of what a modern phone can do.

Now, Qualcomm is trying to become the default central nervous system for the next generation of drones, too. The Qualcomm Snapdragon Flight puts a Snapdragon 801 SoC with a quad-core 2.26GHz processor, dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, support for real-time flight control systems, a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver, 4K video processing, and support for speedy recharging onto a little board that’s the size of a business card.

According to Qualcomm, the first drone to use the Snapdragon Flight reference platform will be a UAV made by Yuneec slated to launch in 2016. But if the board and the drone market both meet expectations, a steady stream of UAVs built around the Flight platform will be right around the corner.

Read the whole thing at http://www.wired.com/2015/09/new-qualcomm-tech-lead-ultimate…

  • Matt
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