Editors Note: This article was originally published in Robot Report, a sister publication to Robotics Business Review. Qualcomm has been a pioneer in wireless telecommunications for 30-plus years. To maintain its spirit of innovation, the San Diego-based company now spends approximately $5 billion per year on R&D. Under the stewardship of Dev Singh the last four years, Qualcomm has made major in-roads with the robotics development community. But today it took another major step in hopes of becoming the de facto development platform for robotics companies.

Qualcomm, a leader in wireless technology, has recently released the world's first 5G and AI-enabled robotics platform. Qualcomm says the Robotics RB5 platform includes novel technology that will accelerate the development of power-efficient, high-computing robots and drones for applications ranging from industrial and enterprise applications to defense and military sectors. Specifically, some of the applications this platform can enhance include inventory robots, retail robots, pick-sort-place robots, cleaning robots, delivery drones, healthcare robots, and defense robots. Qualcomm's Robotics RB5 platform, punctuated by their QRB5165 processor, supports a number of connectivity protocols through Qualcomm's FastConnect subsystems: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.1, 4G, and 5G. This platform has been designed specifically for applications in robotics, and it comes with hardware, software, and other development tools to help designers with such applications.