Qualcomm Technologies Inc. has unveiled a new reference design for drones that integrates 5G and artificial intelligence.

The chipmaker said today it’s aiming to replicate the success of the experimental Ingenuity Helicopter that recently visited Mars, right here on Earth. Ingenuity was actually a test run for the new Qualcomm Flight RB5 5G Platform as it made the first unmanned flight across the red planet earlier this year.

The Qualcomm platform is powered by the company’s latest QRB5165 processor and will serve as a basis for a new generation of high-performance, low-power 5G drones, the company said. It’s hoped that the new reference design will accelerate the development of commercial, enterprise and industrial drones that leverage more powerful edge computing capabilities.

The company said possible applications for its next-generation drones lie in delivery, defense, entertainment, inspection, mapping and security.

Qualcomm’s original drone platform, Qualcomm Flight, was launched back in 2015 and was followed by Qualcomm Flight Pro in 2018. The platforms were so successful that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration used off-the-shelf tech from Qualcomm Flight Pro to build the Ingenuity helicopter that flew on Mars. It wasn’t the first time NASA borrowed Qualcomm’s drone tech either. Qualcomm Flight was previously used on the Perseverance Rover to manage and process images.

Dev Singh, senior director, business development and general manager of autonomous robotics, drones and intelligent machines at Qualcomm, said the company is engaging with more than 200 robotics and drone ecosystem firms regarding the new platform.

“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,” he said.

The Qualcomm Flight RB5 5G Platform boasts eight QRB5165 central processing units, a single graphics processing unit, a neural processing engine and cameras that can handle 8K resolution and capture 4K at 120 frames per second. Other capabilities include low-power consumption, plus 5G and Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, the latter of which has been tweaked to enable line-of-sight flights of up to eight kilometers, Qualcomm said.

Qualcomm said it believes drones will become a key element of the “internet of things” and the edge computing flow in future.

“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,” Singh said.

The drone reference design is available now through ModalAI and the Qualcomm Flight RB5 5G development kit is expected to be available in the fourth quarter.

Photo: Qualcomm