Computer Vision News - July 2016

We never wrote yet about drones, though their market represent a huge opportunity for our industry. We have therefore decided to ask a true expert of the field to be our guest of July: Prasad Modali is Intel’s Drone System Engineering Director and, as you will not fail to notice, was kind enough to share with us his views about the business prospects in that field. Moreover, he has a few nice stories to tell about what people do with drones. Read on… Computer Vision News: What is it that makes drones so cheap to build? Prasad Modali: Most of the technology composing the drones uses components that are manufactured in large volumes for smartphones: GPS solutions, chips, cameras, microprocessors, gyroscopes; all these pieces are already built in billions for the smartphone industry . So, just by the sheer volume economics, they become very cheap. To build a drone, you need these pieces: you are repurposing these pieces to build the drone. That means that the electronics of the drone is really cheap. That is one of the biggest positive factors that drive down the cost of drones. CVN: Would that limit the profitability of building drones, since any competitor could offer them at low prices? Modali: Absolutely yes: if you build the drone with a processor, a camera and sensors, you are not making any money on the hardware and opportunities are very limited. So you have to figure ways to bring differentiation on top of that. CVN: Th e biggest companies in the high tech arena are heavily investing in drones. Does that mean that they have how to generate that added value? Modali: I think the value is in software: how you take software and develop capabilities that the drone cannot have just with the hardware alone. For example, computer vision is a very important topic in this perspective: with vision technology you can make drones safer, fly longer and do many more things than flying and taking pictures. 16 Computer Vision News Guest Prasad Modali: INTEL “ The electronics of the drone is really cheap ” Guest