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Qualcomm® Flight Pro™ and the VOXL® Lineage

Qualcomm Flight Pro

Qualcomm Flight Pro was the successor to Snapdragon Flight, adding processing, connectivity and machine vision to the same idea: a flight controller and a Linux companion computer on one board small enough to fly on a drone you could carry. Like its predecessor it was created by the founders of ModalAI during their time at Qualcomm, and that architecture is still in production and actively supported by the same team.

From Flight Pro to VOXL

VOXL was built directly on the Qualcomm Flight Pro architecture, by the lead engineers who designed the original. The changes were about longevity rather than novelty: components were refreshed — a TDK ICM-20948 IMU in place of parts heading toward obsolescence — so the platform could stay buildable and supported for years instead of being discontinued underneath its users. Software shipped weekly, with comprehensive documentation behind it.

VOXL has since reached end of life, along with VOXL Flight, VOXL Flight Deck and VOXL m500. The architecture did not stop there — it moved onto a much faster processor.

ModalAI VOXL 2 and VOXL 2 Mini autopilot boards shown between two development drones

Where the Line Is Today

The architecture is still in production, still supported weekly, and still built by the same engineers. It is now two boards:

Board What it is
VOXL 2 16 grams. Qualcomm QRB5165, 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.

Both are NDAA '20 Section 848 compliant, assembled in the USA and on the Blue UAS Framework list. If you want a complete aircraft, Starling 2 Max and Stinger Vision FPV fly on them. See VOXL for the full line-up.

What You Get Beyond the Board

The Qualcomm Flight RB5 5G Platform succeeded Qualcomm Flight Pro with more processing and AI capability again.