Brian Krzanich, chief executive officer of Intel Corp., right, shows the AscTec Firefly drone at CES in Las Vegas. Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Intel invented a new sport on stage at the Consumer Electronics Show this year: drone pong.
To play, four men stood around around a drone hovering in place. As each one approached the drone, it would float away from him, much like the digital ball in the classic video game Pong, and drift toward another person. He could then “pass” it to the next person by approaching the drone.
It’s a simple game, but it was one of the most talked about demos at CES this year because the technology that makes it work is quite complex. The drone had no remote control operator; instead it could “see” people approaching and and move away from them thanks to an autopilot system built by German company Ascending Technologies based in part on Intel’s RealSense 3D cameras.
This was more than a flashy demo. The AscTec Firefly pong drones are a real product from Ascending Technologies, and they will ship with the new autopilot technology later this year. Intel likes them so much, the chipmaker has bought a minority stake in Ascending.
Darkening the Skies With Drones
The two companies hope the new technology will enable a whole new wave of drones that can fly themselves, or at least avoid collisions without human help. It’s a timely idea. Earlier this week the Federal Aviation Administration approved the use of commercial drones in more industries, and if Amazon has its way, flying contraptions will one day be delivering packages to your doorstep. That means the skies will get increasingly crowded, and all those drones will need better ways to keep from bumping into each other—or into your house.
To prove that its technology is up to that task, Intel showed a AscTec Firefly navigating an obstacle course onstage at CES, and presented footage of the drones flying through a forest.
Autopiloting systems could make life easier for drone pilots. Even though most seasoned drone pilots have to spend much of their attention on avoiding hitting whatever they’re using a drone to examine — the beams supporting a bridge, or perhaps a tall building under construction, for example. Better autopiloting systems could help pilots focus more on doing their jobs.
There are several other drone collision detection systems on the market, but Ascending CEO and co-founder Daniel Gurdan says the RealSense cameras set his company’s product apart. Smaller than other 3-D cameras, the RealSense camera module weighs only 8 grams and is less than 4mm thick.
“It’s a total game changer,” Gurdan says. “Every gram you add costs you flight time. You can’t put an arbitrarily sized sensor you want it to be light.”
But it’s not as though just anyone could slap a RealSense camera on a drone and call it an autopilot — Ascending Technology has had to create the algorithms that turn the imagery collected by those cameras into something the drones can use.
A New Job for a Laptop Camera
RealSense has, up until now, been sold as a built-in camera for laptops and tablets. But at CES, Intel lifted the curtain on an idea the company has been exploring behind the scenes, including a jacket that can help visually impaired people sense objects around them, and a new robot from Roomba-makers iRobot that can navigate obstacle courses.
“We always had in the back of our minds how depth sensing technology could change a lot of things,” says Anil Nanduri, a product manager at Intel.
Last summer, Intel started looking around for a drone company to work with. “We wanted someone who was strong in engineering,” Nanduri says. “[Ascending] is well known in the space, and they were doing a lot of work with sensors.”
The Ascending Technologies team has been building drones since 2002, starting with the X-UFO, one of the first toy quadcopters. “In the beginning we focused on hobby and toy products,” Gurdan says. “After that we perfected the product we put more and more into professional applications.”
Gurdan and his co-founders took the Ascending Technologies name in 2007. Today the company is focused mostly on industrial applications, such as oil rigs, refineries, and power lines.
Autopilot would be incredibly useful for those applications, so the team started looking at the various solutions that were on the market, but they found all the options lacking. “The more sensitive the sensors were, the bigger they were,” Gurdan explains. “It was clear we would have to build or own system.”
Intel came along in a nick of time, saving the company the work of creating its own camera, and letting them focus on the software and algorithms. Plus, the company gave Ascending a cash infusion.
“The investment was less about the money but about showing some commitment and working together,” Gurdan says. “We all think this could be a game changer that could democratize the drone industry by making it possible for anyone to fly a drone.”
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