Spraying pesticides, street scene shooting, power inspection, road enforcement, express delivery, film and television shooting… these are the specific applications of drones after widespread adoption.
In recent years, the widespread use of drones has made it one of the hottest industries today, benefiting from the innovative models of the internet era and the service demands of market development. Drones are currently one of the fastest developing and most promising industries.
The participants in the drone industry chain mainly include two categories: one is manufacturers of complete machines like DJI and GoPro; the other is upstream manufacturers that provide hardware and software for drones, including chips, flight control, batteries, sensors, etc.
In terms of hardware, chips are the core components that directly determine the control performance, communication capability, and image processing ability of drones. Choosing good chips is particularly important for the performance and operational use of drone products.
Based on the comprehensive strength, market competitiveness, technological innovation, chip quality, and honors of domestic and foreign drone chip manufacturers in the main control chip area, the High-tech Robot Network has summarized and listed 13 mainstream drone chip manufacturers currently on the market.
Among them, the market pattern of drone main control chips is still dominated by European, American, and Korean manufacturers, with 8 foreign and 5 Chinese manufacturers, as follows:
1. Qualcomm
Country: USA
Established: July 1985
Main control chip: Qualcomm Snapdragon chip. It has functions such as wireless communication, sensor integration, and spatial positioning; it uses “RealSense” technology to build 3D maps and perceive the surrounding environment, allowing it to fly like a bat and actively avoid obstacles.
To bring chip advantages into the drone field, Qualcomm began acquisitions and investments in 2015, acquiring the drone development company KMEL Robotics in February and leading a $50 million C round investment in 3DR, a competitor in the consumer field.
In addition, Qualcomm launched the drone design platform Snapdragon Flight in September last year.
Compared to the current main drone chip solutions, Qualcomm Snapdragon Flight has the smallest CPU size and the highest frequency, and is currently applied in domestic manufacturers’ small drone products like Hover Camera and Zero Zero Robotics’ selfie drone Dobby prototypes.
2. Intel
Country: USA
Established: July 1968
Main control chip: Intel Atom processor, which includes up to 6 Intel “RealSense” 3D cameras, uses a quad-core Intel Atom processor’s PCI-express custom card to process real-time information about distance and how to avoid nearby obstacles.
As traditional PC sales continue to decline, Intel is shifting its chip business to the booming drone battlefield. However, compared to selling terminal products, Intel is more interested in providing solutions for drones, especially in the area of drone vision.
Intel’s biggest advantage lies in its RealSense technology that uses infrared lasers, which avoids a lot of computation required for computer vision recognition compared to Qualcomm’s binocular vision technology, effectively improving accuracy.
In the market, Intel spent $60 million in 2015 to hire TyphoonH as a promoter of RealSense in the consumer market, and recently released the Aero drone aimed at developers, which also features RealSense technology.
Additionally, Intel had previously invested in two drone companies, Airware and Precisionhawk, and in 2015 acquired wearable device and smart glasses manufacturer Recon, as well as the German drone manufacturer Ascending Technologies focused on algorithm research.
3. STMicroelectronics
Country: Italy
Established: 1987
STMicroelectronics is one of the manufacturers with the widest semiconductor product lines in the industry, ranging from discrete diodes and transistors to complex system-on-chip (SoC) devices, and including complete platform solutions with reference designs, application software, manufacturing tools, and specifications, with over 3000 main product types. STMicroelectronics is a major supplier in various industrial fields, possessing various advanced technologies, intellectual property (IP) resources, and world-class manufacturing processes.
Main control chip: ST STM32 series. STMicroelectronics’ STM32L0 series microcontroller is based on ARM’s Cortex – M0+ architecture, focusing on ultra-low power consumption, mainly applied in the fields of wearables, medical, and industrial sensors.
4. Texas Instruments
Country: USA
Established: 1930
It is the largest manufacturer of analog circuit technology components in the world and a leading multinational semiconductor company known for developing, manufacturing, and selling semiconductors and computer technology, mainly engaged in innovative digital signal processing and analog circuits research, manufacturing, and sales.
Main control chip: TI OMAP3630. Micron flash memory, Texas Instruments power management + USB solutions, Atheros 802.11b/g/n WiFi controller, Bosch BMA150 accelerometer, BMP180 barometric sensor, and MEMS IMU-3000 gyroscope and motion processor, Microchip’s PIC24HJ microcontroller.
5. Samsung
Country: South Korea
Established: January 1969
Main control chip: Samsung Artik chip; Artik 10 adopts a 1.3GHz octa-core processor, with 2GB of memory and 16GB of flash storage, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy, ZigBee, and Thread.
Samsung launched the low-power Artik chip in May 2015, with three specifications, among which Artik1 is only 12mm in size and costs less than $10. It is reported that the specifications differ in processing speed, storage capacity, and wireless communication capabilities. This chip is aimed at drones, smart furniture, and other internet devices.
6. Atmel
Country: USA
Established: 1984
As a global leading company, it is dedicated to designing and manufacturing various microcontrollers, capacitive touch solutions, advanced logic, mixed-signal, non-volatile memory, and RF components, with a commitment to serve customers in the electronic markets of North America, Europe, and Asia through its production, engineering, sales, and distribution networks in over 60 countries.
Main control chip: ATMEL MEGA2560 development board, including AT91M55800A, ARM7TDMI core, embedded ICE interface, memory, and peripherals.
7. NVIDIA
Country: USA
Established: January 1993
Compared to Intel, which is trying to use its processors to enter the drone market to make up for weak PC sales, NVIDIA has no urgent reason to enter the drone market, as its core GPU graphics processing business has a year-on-year growth rate of 7%, accounting for 82% of its revenue in the first half of 2016.
It is understood that in 2015 NVIDIA successively provided chips for Parrot and its competitor DJI, developing the Jetson TX1 chip solution for the drone market, which is capable of handling various image recognition and advanced artificial intelligence tasks, allowing drones using it to stay in the air longer.
NVIDIA also provides developers with computer vision libraries such as OpenVX1.1 to help developers utilize the motherboard.
8. Nuvoton
Country: China
Established: July 2008
Split from Winbond Electronics, inheriting the product line of logic ICs, core technologies, partners, customer base, and business, while continuously strengthening product innovation and understanding of the end application market.
Main control chip: Nuvoton MINI5 series. Includes low-end remote control using SOP20 packaging of 4T 8051 N79E814, and mid-to-high-end remote control using Cortex-M0 M051 series built-in ARM9, and H.264 video transcoder N329 series.
9. XMOS
Country: UK
Established: 2005
The company mainly designs high-performance chips for the Internet of Things, which can be embedded in household appliances or personal consumer electronics.
Main control chip: XMOS XCORE multicore microcontroller, with a frequency of up to 500MHz and a 32-bit RISC core, equipped with Hardware Response I/O interface.
Multirotor aircraft require four to six brushless motors to drive the drone’s rotor. The motor drive controller is used to control the speed and direction of the drone; in principle, one motor requires one 8-bit MCU for control, but there are also solutions where one MCU controls multiple BLDC motors.
10. Rockchip
Country: China
Established: 2001
It is a domestic wholly-owned integrated circuit design company and a nationally recognized integrated circuit design enterprise, focusing on research and development of digital audio and video, mobile multimedia chip-level.
The RK2606A chip independently developed by the company was hailed as the brightest “core” in China in 2006, winning the “Best Market Performance Award” and quickly becoming the first brand in high-end MP3 chips. In 2007, the “Rockchip Digital Audio and Video Processing Chip Control Software” won a gold medal at the 11th China International Software Expo and established a strategic partnership with Microsoft.
Main control chip: Rockchip RK3288; Rockchip has showcased drone products based on RK3288, but this is the first time it has been displayed and tested flight in China.
In terms of functionality, it supports one-click panorama, loss return, point cruise, one-click selfie, one-click fly-around, geofencing, and more.
11. Allwinner
Country: China
Established: September 2007
Emerging from Zhuhai, Guangdong, Allwinner has launched the R8 portable Internet TV solution since early last year, and jointly launched the “Dingdong” smart speaker (Allwinner R16 solution) with JD Smart; it also successfully crowdfunded nearly $2 million for the $9 computer Banana Pi from Next Thing.
These three products are all based on Allwinner’s R series chips aimed at the IoT market. Remix launched the “first Android PC”—Remix Mini based on Allwinner’s A64 chip, successfully crowdfunding nearly $1.5 million on Kickstarter. The main control solution used in Xiaomi drones is also based on Allwinner’s latest R16 platform.
12. Leadcore
Country: China
Established: March 2008
DJI Phantom 4 has used the Leadcore solution LC1860, and Zero Zero Robotics also launched a binocular vision overall solution based on Leadcore LC1860. It is reported that Leadcore has also jointly established Pine Cone Electronics with Xiaomi, focusing on the smart hardware field.
The business scope includes technology development, transfer, consulting in the fields of electronic products, computer software and hardware, communication equipment, integrated circuits, and product R&D, manufacturing, sales in these areas, as well as import and export of goods and technology.
13. Huawei HiSilicon
Country: China
Established: October 2004
Huawei has entered the drone field, and its wholly-owned subsidiary HiSilicon originally captured 70% of the market share in the security camera market, and then to give these security cameras wings, launched the Huawei drone platform in July 2016, in cooperation with Shenzhen local startup Zhoxin Technology, launching a series of drone solutions based on HiSilicon chips.
The predecessor was the Huawei Integrated Circuit Design Center established in 1991. HiSilicon is headquartered in Shenzhen, with design branches in Beijing, Shanghai, Silicon Valley in the USA, and Sweden.
HiSilicon’s products cover chips and solutions in wireless networks, fixed networks, and digital media fields, successfully applied in more than 100 countries and regions globally; in the digital media field, it has launched SoC network monitoring chips and solutions, visual phone chips and solutions, DVB chips and solutions, and IPTV chips and solutions.
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