Intrinsyc Partners with Qualcomm for High-End Drone Development Kit

Intrinsyc Technologies and Qualcomm have come together to bring about their Flight Pro Development Kit targeted at the drone and robotics communities.

“Qualcomm Flight Pro is a follow-up to the previous Qualcomm Flight platform introduced in 2016 (Snapdragon Flight), with even more powerful processing capabilities and flexibility for drone device development. The Qualcomm Flight Pro is a single compact board; enabling OEMs to build drones that are light, small, easy to use and affordable, with long battery life and superior functionalities.” —Cliff Morten, Intrinsyc Vice President of Client Solutions

The Flight Pro reference development board features a Snapdragon 820 SoC with Kyro quad-core processor, 4Gb of LPDDR4 RAM, 32Gb of UFS Flash, Adreno 530 GPU, and Hexagon 680 DSP. Connectivity options are plenty, and offers Wi-Fi 5 802.11a/b/g/n/ac 2.4/5.0 GHz 2×2 MU-MIMO/Bluetooth 4.2 via pre-certified QCA6174A module, along with a pair of Wi-Fi/BT antennas. Location options for the board include a WGR7640-based GNSS solution, and support for a third-party U-blox MAX-M8Q-0–00 external GNSS module with high-performance antenna and shielding.

The development board also packs an array of sensors and cameras — a dual IMU, gyroscope, accelerometer, compass, and barometer. On the camera side, the board sports a 13MP IMX214 KLT module (4K @ 30FPS), a downward-facing Sunny MD102A module, and two forward-facing stereo-vision Sunny GP161C modules.

As for software, the board comes pre-loaded with Linux (Yocto-release: Jethro), along with Linux 3.4, which is compatible with Qualcomm’s Machine Vision and Navigator SDKs. The Qualcomm Flight Development Kit is available for pre-order at $949, which includes the board, Serial Console Adapter, USB/Serial cable, 5V power supply, and PWM. Bear in mind; you will still have to purchase additional hardware to build a complete drone, which will bump that price up to nearly $1,500.