Qualcomm’s Flight RB5 5G drone platform leverages both 5G and AI capabilities to accelerate advanced drone development. Powered by the company’s QRB5165 robotics processor, the Flight RB5 platform offers powerful heterogeneous computing at low power with long-range 5G and Wi-Fi 6 connectivity and support for seven concurrent cameras.
With a 5th generation AI engine capable of delivering 15 tera operations per second (TOPS), the platform runs complex AI-based deep-learning workloads and enables fully autonomous flight. A dedicated tensor accelerator processes 8 TOPS for accurate edge inferencing that reduces processing time for mission-critical drone applications.
The 5G and Wi-Fi 6 connectivity of the Flight RB5 platform enhances critical flying abilities beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS) to allow safer, more reliable flight. Safety controls alone can no longer ensure industrial and commercial drone safety, especially when scaling to BVLOS operations. In addition, a secure processing unit offers security for drones at every level, from crypto to digital rights management. Security support includes hardware root of trust, a trusted execution environment, secure boot, and camera security.
Qualcomm is working with Verizon to complete network testing of the Flight RB5 5G platform for the Verizon 5G network. The 5G mmWave-capable platform is expected to be offered via the Verizon Thingspace marketplace.
The Qualcomm Flight RB5 5G drone reference design is available for preorder through ModalAI. A development kit is expected to be available in Q4 of 2021.
Source: https://www.edn.com/platform-enables-purpose-built-5g-drones/