Intel Announces Commercial Drone: Intel Falcon 8+ System

In the past few months, Intel has been hard at work in the drone space announcing the first consumer drone, the Yuneec Typhoon H with Intel^® RealSense^™ technology for intelligent obstacle navigation, and the Intel Aero Platform, a platform for developers to build their own drones from the ground up.

Intel is also extending our innovation – with our Drone 100 light shows and through enabling a Volocopter with our drone technology. We’ve quickly accelerated our efforts to develop new drone technologies. Although our technology has already touched drone enthusiasts, developers and global businesses, we look to achieve even more.

Intel is focused on continuing to create innovative new technologies and to lead in the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) segment – especially in the commercial space.

In the commercial UAV industry, the AscTec^® Falcon 8 drone is available in the European market and continues to be the leading platform for this segment. The Falcon 8 offers the best performance and weight-to-payload ratio in the entire market; the highest stability in harsh conditions; easily exchangeable and deeply integrated payloads; best-in-class safety, including unmatched robustness against magnetic field disturbances; high-precision GPS; and one of the world’s largest drone reseller and support networks to properly support your drone business and daily operations.

Today, at the 2016 INTERGEO drone conference in Hamburg, Germany, we are building on the AscTec Falcon 8 system and announcing the release of the Intel Falcon 8+ for North American markets. This advanced system includes the Intel Falcon 8+ UAV, Intel Cockpit for ground control, as well as the Intel Powerpack to power the UAV. The Intel Falcon 8+ is our first Intel-branded commercial drone.

With the introduction of the Intel Falcon 8+ system, Intel is setting a new standard for commercial-grade drones, incorporating full electronic system redundancy and automated aerial-sensing solutions with best-in-class onboard sensors. It is also powered with the triple-redundant AscTec Trinity autopilot. The system provides detailed images down to millimeter accuracy and gives valuable structural analysis that helps users detect and prevent further damage to infrastructure. Operators will have tremendous opportunities to generate valuable aerial precision data.

Drones are an important computing platform for the future, and Intel is positioning itself at the forefront of this opportunity to provide the compute, sensor, communications and cloud integration for the growing drone ecosystem.

Josh Walden is senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s New Technology Group.