Qualcomm Creates a New Chipset For Drones
Firstly, what is a drone? According to the definition given by techtarget.com – “A drone, in a technological context, is an unmanned aircraft. Drones are more formally known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). Essentially, a drone is a flying robot. The aircraft may be remotely controlled or can fly autonomously through software-controlled flight plans in their embedded systems working in conjunction with GPS. UAVs have most often been associated with the military but they are also used for search and rescue, surveillance, traffic monitoring, weather monitoring and firefighting, among other things.”
Drones have been in the news for various reasons – both controversial and non controversial, and even though they haven’t been legalised yet, a lot of software companies are looking to invest in the evolution of the drone. One of these companies, is Qualcomm, which is a ‘chipmaker’ company who has made the famous Snapdragon chipset for the Android smartphones. They have now reportedly created a new series of chipsets specifically for the drones, and are being called – the Snapdragon Flight.
Drones have had quite an evolution when we speak of its structure and size; and Qualcomm claims to be here, to enhance the drone design since it has already covered the big task of integrating a CPU with GPS, wireless connectivity, image processing etc. on smartphones. So, what exactly is Snapdragon Flight? Well, the company says that they’re basically repurposing the same Snapdragon 800 system-on-a-chip (SoC) processors for drones. Here’s what Qualcomm says:
“We’ve integrated so many things in one chipset, it reduces the weight of the drone significantly. Which means you can reduce the size of the motors, fans and battery. And it flies higher and longer.”
So, now here we have the first signs of smartphones and drones collaborating. Today, there’s a smartphone software in a drone, tomorrow there’ll be a drone software in the smartphone and then what, you ask? Armageddon.
