Intel buys Movidius to help bring computer vision to drones
Intel's RealSense computer vision platform has been lacking a low-powered way of recognizing what its depth-sensing cameras are seeing -- until now.
The chip giant is buying Movidius, the designer of a range of system-on-chip products for accelerating computer vision processing.
Movidius supplies chips to drone makers such as DJI and to thermal imaging company FLIR Systems, itself a supplier of DJI.
Its chips help computers figure out what they are seeing through cameras like Intel's RealSense by breaking down the processing into a set of smaller tasks that they can execute in parallel.
There are systems that already do this using GPUs, but those are relatively power-hungry, often consuming tens of watts. That's not a problem in fixed applications with access to mains electricity, or in cars, which have huge batteries and a way to recharge them. But in drones or other lightweight IoT devices, power consumption needs to be much lower.
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