Qualcomm® Snapdragon Drone Autopilots
Build Autonomous Drones on Qualcomm Processors
Qualcomm Snapdragon processors are what make the smallest autonomous drones possible — enough compute for perception, navigation and AI in a package light enough to fly. ModalAI builds autopilots around them, and has since the beginning: the team here developed Snapdragon Flight and Qualcomm Flight Pro at Qualcomm before founding the company.
The Current Qualcomm Autopilots
Both run the Qualcomm QRB5165 and put a Linux companion computer and a flight controller on one board.
| Board | What it is | |
|---|---|---|
| VOXL 2 | 16 grams. Eight cores up to 3.091 GHz, 8 GB LPDDR5, 15 TOPS of on-board AI, and a PX4 or ArduPilot flight controller running on the sensors DSP. | |
| VOXL 2 Mini | The same stack at 11 grams and 42 mm square, with a 30.5 mm standard mounting pattern. |
Both are NDAA '20 Section 848 compliant, assembled in the USA and on the Blue UAS Framework list.
What VOXL 2 Adds
VOXL 2 is an improved version of the Qualcomm Flight Pro architecture, documented and supported by the engineers who designed the original. Beyond the processor it brings:
- PX4 flight control, obstacle avoidance and GPS-denied navigation through visual inertial odometry
- ROS and MAVROS autonomous navigation, and MAVSDK on board for building your own applications
- Beyond visual line of sight over 4G/LTE and 5G
- SLAM, obstacle avoidance and object recognition through the VOXL SDK
Where to Start
If you want a complete aircraft rather than a board, Starling 2 Max is a VOXL 2-powered development drone for GPS-denied flight, and Stinger Vision FPV is a Blue UAS Cleared Select FPV aircraft on VOXL 2 Mini. For boards and kits, see the development kits.
The Qualcomm Flight RB5 5G Platform also came out of this line of work.
Software
- Open source Linux kernel, cross-compilers, PX4, ROS and OpenCV
- Docker build environment for CPU, GPU (OpenCL) and DSP (Hexagon SDK) computer vision and deep learning, and Docker on target
- Full technical documentation at docs.modalai.com, and engineers reachable on the developer forum
Earlier hardware from this lineage — VOXL, VOXL Flight, VOXL Flight Deck and VOXL m500 — has reached end of life. See the end-of-life notice, or VOXL for the current line-up.