Affordable Drones might be possible with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Platform

Qualcomm has announced a new platform that might make it possible to develop really affordable drones. The world’s largest smartphone chip manufacturer has named it “Snapdragon Flight” and is first SoC i.e., System-on-Chip that is made to fly. A number of high quality smartphones have been built upon Snapdragon 800 series. This tiny piece of silicon packs a quad-core processor, a graphics engine, GPS, Wireless drivers and other numerous components. This is why we call it “system-on-Chip”. Snapdragon Flight will be making its first debut in 2016 in a Yuneec drone that will be developed in China for maximum $300. Raj Talluri, senior vice president of product management, Qualcomm, says, “We first concepted Snapdragon Flight more than a year ago. It grew out of conversations and requests we were having with customers, as well as a need we were seeing in the market.” He also hinted that Qualcomm is in talks with many OEMs interested in this field besides Yuneec.

This chip is based on Snapdragon 801 that powers various smartphones. It has a 2.26 GHz quad core processor, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 4K video processing, Global Navigation Satellite System and of course a digital signal processor for controlling flight in real time. Qualcomm has greatly reduced the processing board’s size by putting so many features on one chip. A smaller processing board offers more advantages such as low power consumption and therefore a smaller battery; small battery means a small drone motor and overall a cheaper drone model. Drones have been hugely in demand since the past few years. Till now drones were available as high-powered expensive drones or as mere toys. But now snapdragon flight will allow high quality drones to be manufactured at low cost which means more consumers will be able to afford them.

Talluri says, “People want to take pictures,” and therefore it has the selfie feature. This feature allows people to take high quality pictures of them. Other uses include crop dusting, data gathering etc. the idea to make it a GoPro which can fly and follow users.

Qualcomm says the processor is capable of supporting automated obstacle avoidance ability. The processor has been combined with software for drone development tools.
The idea behind the Snapdragon Flight reference platform is that drone manufacturers can use it to build cheaper, lighter, smaller, and more energy-efficient UAVs with advanced capabilities. Along with the video and navigation tools on board, Qualcomm says the board’s processing mettle is strong enough to support automated obstacle-avoidance features.

Talluri further adds, “Drone or robotic developers and OEMs using Snapdragon Flight can create more innovative designs with advanced features in faster time-to-market and with reduced development costs. This is achieved because Snapdragon Flight integrates virtually all the key elements developers need, and they’re already optimized to work together.”