Qualcomm Incorporated announced that its subsidiary, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., has introduced Qualcomm® Snapdragon Flight™, a highly optimized 58x40mm board targeted specifically for consumer drones and robotics applications. Qualcomm Snapdragon Flight is based on a Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 801 processor, along with robust connectivity, advanced drone software and development tools, bringing cutting-edge mobile technologies to create a new class of consumer drones.
Qualcomm Technologies also announced that Yuneec, a leading developer of consumer and professional drones with a long history of innovation in electric aviation, will be one of the first companies to embrace the Snapdragon Flight. Yuneec plans to release a drone based on the platform in 2016.
The Snapdragon Flight features advanced processing power, real-time flight control on the Qualcomm® Hexagon™ DSP, built-in Qualcomm® 2×2 Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth® connectivity, and a leading global navigation satellite system (GNSS) optimized to support highly accurate location positioning.
The Snapdragon Flight is designed to enable the advanced features that drone consumers want most, including:
- 4K Video – 4K high resolution camera support, image enhancement and video processing capabilities and simultaneous 720p encoding for first person view
- Advanced Communication and Navigation – Dual-band 2×2 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and 5 Hz GNSS location capabilities with advanced real-time flight control on Hexagon DSP
- Robust Camera and Sensor Support – 4K stereo VGA, optic flow cameras, inertial measurement unit (IMU), barometer sensor support and ports for additional sensors
- Qualcomm® Quick Charge™ Technology – Supporting fast battery charging in between video/picture sessions
The Snapdragon 801 processor powers some of the world’s most popular smartphones and includes a 2.26GHz quad-core Qualcomm® Krait™ CPU, Qualcomm® Adreno™ 330 GPU, Hexagon DSP, dedicated video encode engine and dual image signal processors (ISP). Together, these form a heterogeneous computing platform to support the development of advanced drone features such as obstacle avoidance and video stabilization.
Availability
Snapdragon Flight is available today for select OEMs, and is expected to be available in commercially available drones by 1H 2016.
