Qualcomm Flight RB5 5G Platform is a high-end drone reference design with 7 cameras

Leveraging its involvement in the Ingenuity Mars helicopter, Qualcomm has introduced the Qualcomm Flight RB5 5G platform, a high-end drone reference design with 5G and WIFi 6 connectivity, seven cameras up to 8K resolution, and 15 TOPS of AI performance.

The platform is based on Qualcomm QRB5165 octa-core processor, a variant of Snapdragon 865 for robotics, also found in Qualcomm Robotics RB5 Platform with support for Intel RealSense D435i (that should reach end-of-life soon), and provides an upgrade to the company’s Flight Pro drone based on Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 platform.

Qualcomm Flight RB5 5G Platform key features and specifications:

SoC – Qualcomm QRB5165 with eight Kryo 585 cores up to 2.84 GHz, GPU Adreno 650 GPU with support for Open GL ES and OpenCL, Hexagon 698 DSP with HVX, Hexagon Tensor Accelerator, Qualcomm Spectra 480 ISP with dual 14-bit image signal processing
Memory – LPDDR5 up to 2750 MHz, LPDDR4x up to 2133 MHz, up to 16GB.
Camera – Up to 200 MP photo capture, up to 25 MP dual camera @ 30 FPS
with Zero Shutter Lag, up to 64 MP single camera @ 30 FPS with
Zero Shutter Lag. Support for 12 cameras by D-PHY and 18 cameras
by C-PHY (7 concurrent)
Video
- 8K video capture @ 30 FPS, up to 10-bit color depth video capture,
- 4K video capture @ 120 FPS, 4K HDR video capture
Connectivity
- Qualcomm FastConnect 6800 System with Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6-ready, 802.11ad, 802.11ay, 802.11ac Wave 2, 802.11a/b/g/n. Support for Dual-band simultaneous (DBS), WPA3-Enterprise, WPA3- Enhanced Open, WPA3 Easy Connect, WPA3-Personal, Bluetooth 5.1
- Optional 2G/3G/4G/5G modem with mmWave and sub-6 GHz bands (Rel. 15) 3.7 Gbps DL, 2.5 Gbps UL, 400 MHz mmW, 100 MHz sub-6
Security – Camera Security, Crypto Engine, Cryptographic Accelerator,
Qualcomm Trusted Execution Environment, Secure Boot. FIPS 140-2 certification for Qualcomm Crypto Engine Core.

On the software side, Qualcomm provides a Ubuntu 18.04 distribution based off Yocto Dunfell, the Linux kernel 4.19, ROS 2, and PX4 open-source autopilot software for drones. Three Qualcomm SDKs are also offered with the Neural Processing SDK for deep-learning, the Computer Vision SDK for gesture recognition, face detection, tracking, and recognition, augmented reality, etc.. as well as the Hexagon DSP SDK for multimedia software optimization. For more technical details, check out the user guide and datasheet on Modalai website.

Qualcomm Flight RB5 5G system architecture

The Qualcomm Flight RB5 5G drone reference design is available for pre-sale now through ModalAI for $999.99 USD. But that’s only the deposit, and the total price is $3999.99 without 5G or $4499.99 with a Quectel RM500-GL 5G modem. Shipping is expected to start in Q4 2021. You may find additional information on the product page and press release.

Via LinuxGizmos

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.