Qualcomm's latest technology allows drones to learn about their environment as they fly

Drones took up a lot of floor (and air) space at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this year, but one of the most impressive displays of new drone tech came from Qualcomm. The chipmaker showed off the latest iteration of its Snapdragon Flight Drone Platform, which allows for flight control and machine learning in real time onboard a drone. With machine learning, drones can fly autonomously without knowing beforehand what they might encounter. Other drones have artificial intelligence that can do things like follow a moving object or avoid obstacles too, but Qualcomm's tech shows more advanced computing that can actually understand what the drone encountered in mid-air and create a flight path. Qualcomm put together a set at its booth at CES that resembled the inside of a cluttered warehouse, showing how its drone processing and decision-making technology is nimble enough to allow drones to operate indoors and in unpredictable settings without using any GPS.