Google is now ready to release its Coral developer board globally after completing improvements throughout its six-month beta period. Google unveiled its Coral edge kit in March, offering developers a Raspberry Pi-like board with an attachable Google Edge TPU machine-learning accelerator. The kit is aimed at engineers and researchers who want to run TensorFlow models at the edge of a network, outside the data center. The Coral Dev Board itself costs $149, which includes a detachable Coral system-on-module (SoM) that can now be bought as a standalone product for $114. The SoM includes Google's Edge TPU with the NXP IMX8M SoC, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, memory, and storage.

You will very soon be able to use Microsoft's Cortana voice assistant with the Raspberry Pi 3 and make cool devices that can accept voice commands. But for that, you'll need to upgrade the popular developer board, which can run Windows 10 IoT Core, to the Creators Update of the OS. You'll be able to use Cortana on Raspberry Pi similar to the way it works on PCs. You'll be able to ask for weather, time, traffic, or stock prices. Users will also able to build smart devices using Raspberry Pi 3 that will be able to accept Cortana's commands.

Before Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone was the go-to low-cost developer board for enthusiasts. It's still used by many, and a new BeagleBone board is now being targeted at robots. The US $79.95 BeagleBone Blue from BeagleBoard.org is a credit-card sized board with all the components needed to operate a robot or even a drone. It is open source, as its schematics have been published, and developers can replicate the board. Robots have unique requirements, and some computer boards specialize in specific features.

Intel is in transition right now: An executive shakeup this month laid the path for new boss Venkata Renduchintala to put his imprint on the company's PC, Internet of Things and software operations. So no wonder the vibe at this week's Intel Developer Forum in Shenzhen was mellow. Intel kept the show a low-key affair, choosing not to bring it to the attention of a worldwide audience, unlike previous years. But IDF Shenzhen remains an important event on Intel's calendar. China is a huge market, and it's also a place where the chip maker encourages small hardware shops in the alleys of Shenzhen to experiment with PC, mobile and now, IoT ideas.

Nvidia hopes to equip drones and robots with high-performance computing capabilities with its new Jetson TX1 developer kit announced on Tuesday. The kit includes an uncased board with all major components on it. It's the size of a credit card, but with 1 teraflop of horsepower delivers more performance than other developer boards available today. Robots and drones require autonomous and smoother navigation capabilities, and the TX1 will help enable such capabilities, said Jesse Clayton, product manager at Nvidia. Robots and drones will be able to recognize objects and avoid collisions using "deep-learning" algorithms and image processing engines on the board, Clayton said.

Drones and robots are getting computer vision with higher-resolution cameras and artificial intelligence to recognize objects and images. Many are made with developer boards like Nvidia's Jetson TX1, which provides the smarts for auto-navigation and collision avoidance. TX1 has the horsepower to process live image feeds, and software tools to instantly analyze and provide context to visuals. The TX1 is now a lot faster and better equipped to handle AI and image processing. Nvidia's new Jetpack 2.3 software tools for TX1, announced on Tuesday, are a major update that doubles the deep-learning performance of the board.

Drones and robots are getting computer vision with higher-resolution cameras and artificial intelligence to recognize objects and images. Many are made with developer boards like Nvidia's Jetson TX1, which provides the smarts for auto-navigation and collision avoidance. TX1 has the horsepower to process live image feeds, and software tools to instantly analyze and provide context to visuals. The TX1 is now a lot faster and better equipped to handle AI and image processing. Nvidia's new Jetpack 2.3 software tools for TX1, announced on Tuesday, are a major update that doubles the deep-learning performance of the board.

Microsoft is challenging Linux's domination in Raspberry Pi-type computers by bringing support for Windows 10 OS to more developer boards. The newest computer to get a version of Windows 10 will be Intel's Joule, which has cutting-edge hardware compared to Raspberry Pi 3. To be specific, Joule will get support for Windows 10 IoT Core -- a slimmed down version of Windows 10 -- by year-end, Microsoft said in a blog post last week. Joule currently supports only the Linux OS. With Windows 10 IoT Core, Joule can be used to develop gadgets, robots, drones, wearables, medical devices, and smart industrial devices. The OS is supported by four other mini-computers -- Raspberry Pi 2 and 3, Qualcomm's DragonBoard 410c, and Intel's MinnowMax.

A new USB stick computer uses Google's machine-learning software to give drones and robots the equivalent of a human eye, and add new smarts to cameras. It is instead designed to analyze pixels and provide the right context for images. Fathom provides the much-needed horsepower for devices like drones, robots and cameras to run computer vision applications like image recognition. These devices alone typically don't have the ability to run computer vision applications. Fathom uses an embedded version of Google's TensorFlow machine learning software for vision processing.

Intel is making it easier to create smarter and more functional gadgets, robots, drones, and wearables using its Edison developer board. The company has made a series of improvements to its latest IoT Developer Kit 3.0, which is used to program functionality into devices. The developer kit adds support for a wider range of sensors and adds connectivity to IBM's Bluemix cloud service. The kit also has improved programming tools and integration with Google's Brillo and Android. Edison has been used as a developer board to prototype and test devices.