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Qualcomm® Flight Pro™ - Build Autonomous Drones with LTE, ROS and PX4

Enable the Smallest Autonomous Drones

The Qualcomm® Flight Pro™ enables developers to create smaller, smarter and safer drones. The Qualcomm Flight Pro was created by the founders of ModalAI during their time at Qualcomm, and its architecture is in production and actively supported by the ModalAI team.

Powering the First Drone to Fly on Mars!

The predecessor to Qualcomm Flight Pro, Snapdragon Flight, is currently onboard NASA JPL's Ingenuity Helicopter, the first autonomous drone to fly on Mars. ModalAI's CEO and co-founder, Chad Sweet led the Snapdragon Flight project during his time at Qualcomm. 

VOXL - Next Generation Qualcomm Flight Pro

ModalAI's VOXL® is an improved version of the Qualcomm Flight Pro architecture that is updated weekly, and includes comprehensive documentation and support. VOXL was developed by the same lead engineers that developed Snapdragon Flight and Qualcomm Flight Pro at Qualcomm. Accessibility and ease of use are really important to the team at ModalAI, and much of their effort is spent making autonomous drones easy to develop and deploy for a broad range of applications.

The Qualcomm Flight RB5 5G succeeded the Qualcomm Flight Pro with even more processing and AI capabilities to add to the Qualcomm Development Drone catalog.

Peripherals and image sensors designed for Qualcomm® Flight Pro are expected to be compatible with VOXL, but we cannot guarantee 100% compatibility.

The hardware improvements ModalAI has included with VOXL compared to the original Qualcomm Flight Pro is to use up to date components, such as the TDK ICM-20948 IMU, to keep the platform maintained and available for years to come. Additionally, the software is updated frequently and well maintained. New software is released almost every week!

Open Development Kit for Drones

VOXL improves on Qualcomm Flight Pro and Snapdragon Flight by including: 

  • PX4 Flight Control, Avoidance and GPS-denied Navigation (VIO)
  • ROS, MAVROS, and MAVSDK Autonomous Navigation
  • Snapdragon Navigator flight controller
  • Beyond Visual Line of Sight flight over 4G / LTE (demo)
  • Docker on target for new operating systems such as Ubuntu (docs)

Ready to Use Kits Accelerate Development

We make many configurations of VOXL available to ease integration into your sUAS or robotics application:

  • Stand-alone Development Kit (Buy Here)
  • Machine Vision Development Kit (Buy Here)
  • Mounted and calibrated Development Kit (Flight Deck Buy Here)
  • A complete Reference Drone! (m500 Buy Here)
  • A Snapdragon and PX4 flight controller in one PCB (VOXL Flight Buy Here)

 

 

Software Features

  • Open source Linux kernel, cross-compilers, PX4, ROS, OpenCV
  • Docker build environment for CPU, GPU (OpenCL) and DSP (Hexagon SDK) heterogeneous computer vision and deep learning processing.
  • Run Docker on VOXL target for improved portability and maintenance.
  • Add cellular LTE connectivity for beyond visual line of sight (add-on).

VOXL Specifications

  • Snapdragon 821: Quad-core up to 2.15GHz, GPU, 2xDSP, Linux
  • Video support: 3x MIPI cameras, UVC 
  • Machine vision support: time synchronized IMU and cameras
  • Additional I/O: WiFi, SPI, I2C, UART, GPIO
  • Light weight, powerful, SWAP-optimized computing:
    • PCB weight 18g
    • Power Module weight 13g
    • Cameras (6g)
    • Power consumption 3-10W