The MIT project for a small drone capable of flying at high speed through dense forest was impressive as a demonstration of ‘sense-and-avoid’ but it looked too futuristic to be mainstream. For this week’s CES show, Qualcomm are showing that obstacle-avoidance technology really is ready for the mass market.
As recounted in Swarm Troopers, Qualcomm have taken a serious interest in the challenge of building processors capable of seeing and interpreting camera images to gives drones vision. Their new Snapdragon Flight drone platform is in the spotlight and showing off its impressive autonomous navigation system, on a drone able to see and understand objects so it can plot a route around obstacles them in real time.
If the system is anything like as capable as this preview video suggests, then there are going to be some pretty impressive drones flying around in the very near future.
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