Drones are becoming flying computers

From autonomous cars to autonomous drones, everything is getting smarter. The data and capability that a drone brings need huge amount of computing and processing and is a perfect fit in the Intel strategy, explains Anil Nanduri, vice president, new technology group gm, uav Segment, intel.

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Intel launched its first commercial falcon 8+ drone at intergeo 2016. Why did the company think of getting into drone business? Intel has been working on drones for some years now. Drones are becoming more and more autonomous. In some aspects they are becoming flying computers. As you know Intel has a long history of enabling computer solutions. So it fits in our strategy.

The second part is that when drones come to the sky, you want them to bevery safe; you want them to avoid collisions. Intel has real sense technology — it is basically a sensor that is very small, weighs just 8 grams and provides the capability to develop collision avoidance. It prevents drones from hitting cars, bridges, people and other such things. This fundamental capability makes drones safer.

Today, people are using drones for taking photographs at weddings, but the area of commercial utilization is phenomenal. Inspecting a bridge,a tower, inspecting any area after a natural disaster, the damage they do to buildings and surroundings… are all very intense work and are often even unsafe for human visits. Drones can be much quicker, faster and capture a lot of data that needs to be digitized. These drones have payloads and that include high-resolution imageries and infrared/ thermal sensors.

There are an endless number of areas where information from drones can be applied. One drone flight can get you gigabytes of data and all of this data needs to be processed. And then we need to do some analysis to see how we can use that data. So when you look at that aspect — the data and capability that a drone brings need huge amount of computing and processing — it all fits in from the Intel point of view.

Do you think the time was right for you to enter the drone market?