Qualcomm reveals its 5G AI drone platform

Revelation

 

Qualcomm, an American multinational corporation builds semiconductors, softwares and several other services related to wireless technology. It has extended its horizon into selling semiconductor products by outsourcing their fabrication to a particular manufacturer (Fabless manufacturing).

 

Qualcomm Technologies Inc. has revealed its next-generation 5G artificial intelligence drone platform. The chipmaker assured that the Ingenuity Helicopter that recently made its visit to the red planet , Mars this year was for experimental purposes in order to undergo a test run for the new Qualcomm Flight RB5 5G Platform.

 

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The company confirmed that the Qualcomm platform will be equipped with the company's latest QRB5165 processor, which is the new generation Qualcomm Technologies premium-tier processor basically employed for robotic purposes and is designed with the 7nm process for better performance and power efficiency. The company hoped that this new reference design will help in furthering the developments of commercial, enterprise and industrial drones.

 

The company's previous ventures include Qualcomm Flight and Qualcomm Flight Pro. The former was launched in the year 2015 and the latter in the year 2018. These two platforms proved to be a success. 

 

Therefore, National Aeronautics and Space Administration made use of the off-the-shelf technology from Qualcomm Flight Pro in order to build the aforementioned Ingenuity Helicopter which later made its way across the red planet. It is to be pointed that this is not the first time NASA put its hands on Qualcomm's drone tech, but the one that was launched on 30 July, 2020 named Perseverance Rover was also previously employed to seek traces of ancient life and also at the same time, collect samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and soil).

 

A senior director, business development and general manager of autonomous robotics, drones and intelligent machines at Qualcomm, Dev Singh informed that the company has arrested the usage of more than 200 robotics and drone ecosystem firms.[siliconangle]

 

He also added, "We are proud to continue our momentum of enabling the digital transformation of global industries by unveiling the Qualcomm Flight RB5 5G Platform, a solution that is purpose-built for drone development with enhanced autonomy and intelligence features, bringing premium connected flight capabilities to industrial, enterprise and commercial segments.”

 

The company has a firm belief that drones will be the first and foremost key of the "internet of things". 

 

(Must Check: What is IoT?)

 

Singh concluded, "Drones will be out there doing multiple things and surveillance, vision and GPS and the aggregation of data will be a critical part of data flows."