“We are excited to be working with DJI, who like us, believe in pushing technology beyond the limits of possibilities and paving the way for creators, makers and developers”, said Mark Murphy, Canonical’s VP, Devices Sales and Global Alliances. With the Manifold, an 11 centimeter-square package containing an Nvidia Tegra K1 processor and a host of ports, DJI wants you to take it literally. Given the extra processing power of the Manifold, its potential applications are more advanced than the typical drones. Manifold opens up for aerial and ground technology to intelligently work together to solve complex problems. And because of the device’s OS, it means that it supports CUDA, OpenCV, ROS, DirectX, and OpenGL.
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Chinese UAV outfit DJI is trumpeting the release of what it describes as the “most powerful computer designed for drones” – the “Manifold” embedded computer packing a quad-core ARM Cortex A-15 processor.
Manifold also features an NVIDIA Kepler-based GPU that allows developers to build AI applications with computer vision and deep learning.
A few aspects of the Manifold recall mini PCs such as Intel’s NUC (Next Unit of Computing): 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, an SD-card slot and connectors for four USB ports, HDMI out, Ethernet and audio.
Though the idea of sentient robot drones is something out of science fiction and likely upcoming horror flicks, it may actually help with applications such as, security applications as using this hardware allow drones to “not only be able to sense the surrounding environment, but also identify objects and respond in an instant”.
Most usefully, however, it’s fully compatible with a whole host of third-party sensors, like infrared cameras, air sensors, geographical surveying equipment and other research devices.
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Manifold uses Ubuntu 14.04, the latest Long Term Support version, which will be supported by Canonical until April 2019. Manifold is available to order now for $499 and will start shipping November 15.
