Qualcomm is known for making the Snapdragon line of smartphone chips. Come CES 2016, they’ll be debuing a new product in the Snapdragon line. The difference however is that this product isn’t meant for smartphones; it’s meant for drones.
The company has since put up a teaser for its new Snapdragon Flight drone platform, with the main attraction being combining both camera and communications tech onto the same board. According to Qualcomm, this platform is based on the Snapdragon 801. Judging by the trailer on Youtube, the Snapdragon Flight offers an autonomous navigation mode, allowing the drone to return to the launch pad by itself, all while avoiding any objects blocking its path.
Other features on the platform include an optical flow camera, obstacle mapping, visual inertial odometry and motion planning. The Flight will also be able to handle 4K videos and it comes with Qualcomm’s “Quick Charge” technology on board. The system runs on a 2.26GHz quad-core processor and Adreno 330 GPU. The first drone that will be based on the Snapdragon Flight is expected to come from Yuneec early this year.
