Intel has made significant investments in the drone industry with its UAV group, which develops products and software designed to promote further use of Intel technology by promoting drone development. “It’s the virtuous cycle of growth,” said Anil Nanduri, Intel vice president and general manager of the UAV Group, speaking at Drone World Expo on November 15.
So far, the company has designed its own drones used for airborne choreographed nighttime light shows; developed a drone inspection system undergoing trials on Airbus A380 fuselages; created the Intel Aero Compute Board drone system, which fits onto an electronics package the size of a playing card and runs a Linux operating system and Intel’s RealSense technology; provided technology to E-Volo for development of its manned electric, multi-rotor Volocopter; developed its own industrial drone system, the V-shaped, eight-rotor Falcon 8+, which can haul a Sony A7R full-frame, mirrorless digital camera; and created the Intel Aero ready-to-fly quadcopter that offers open-source programming opportunities for drone developers.
One of the Intel group’s most interesting designs is the Shooting Star drone, a 280-gram device with four encased rotors that surround an LED lighting package. Last week, Intel engineers flew a record 500 Shooting Stars during a nighttime demonstration of the lighting effects available from a large group of drones programmed to deliver a stunning light show. Shooting Stars could replace fireworks, Nanduri explained, eliminating their environmental hazards and noise. “These drones are green,” he said.
The Volocopter project highlights Intel’s skills at flight control design, rotor electronics and battery charging technology. According to Nanduri, the Volocopter flight control technology meets stringent manned aircraft certification requirements for flight control reliability and safety. German authorities required proof of this before manned flight testing of the Volocopter could take place, which occurred on March 30, he added. “This is a start. To commercialize this will take a lot more work.” (E-Volo conducted unmanned high-speed flight testing earlier this month.)
Nanduri sees many other opportunities for the technology that his team has developed, including expanding the Airbus airframe inspection testing to fly 10 drones at a time, using fleet management experience from the Shooting Star program. “This market is growing,” he concluded. “There is a huge amount of opportunity for all of us, and we’ll continue to build our technical capabilities to help [the industry]. We are building up our team to engage [on all of these opportunities].”