Dual-Brain Arduino Ventuno Q Debuts With Qualcomm Dragonwing For AI Robotics
Five months after acquiring Arduino, the open-source hardware and software company best known for its UNO and Nano microcontroller board for hobbyists, Qualcomm is looking to make another big splash with its new Arduino Ventuno Q, a single-board, dual-brain computer built specifically for AI, robotics, and actuation.
The Ventuno Q is built on Qualcomm's Dragonwing platform, combining the muscle of the company's Dragonwing IQ8 series processor sporting an onboard NPU capable of up to 40 TOPS, with an STM32HS microcontroller dedicated to low-latency actuation and precise motor controls.
It also includes 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM for concurrent inference and complex multitasking, and 64GB of eMMC storage that is expandable by way of an M.2 NVMe Gen4 slot. From Qualcomm's vantage point, these specs enable high‑performance AI compute with deterministic real‑time control, paving the way for robotic systems that both understand and intelligently react to the environment.
"By tightly integrating a real-time microcontroller and an NPU-accelerated processor, Ventuno Q makes it possible to build machines that perceive, decide, and act—all on a single board," Qualcomm says.
"But that’s not all. Its tech specs include WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.3 wireless technology, industrial I/Os that include native CAN-FD, PWM, and high-speed GPIO for precise physical control; ROS 2-ready workflows and robotics use cases are baked directly into the platform; and high-speed connectors for multiple MIPI-CSI cameras, advanced audio, displays, and 2.5Gb Ethernet," Qualcomm adds.
In case you're wondering where the name Ventuno Q comes from, the word "Ventuno" means "twenty-one" in Italian and it was chosen to pay homage to Arduino's 21st anniversary. There's also a connection to Arduino's popular UNO (which means "one" in Italian). Arduino views the UNO as its coming-of-age moment, and with the release of the Ventuno Q, it's certainly come a long way in the past two decades.
The overarching idea behind the Ventuno Q is to remove barriers and and make advanced robotics and AI more accessible to developers, educators, and innovators. Specifically, Qualcomm says the Ventuno Q eliminates multi-device complexity, enables faster build-outs of complex AI systems through the Arduino App Lab environment, is compatible with other hardware from both Arduino and third parties, and can be set up either as a single board computer (SBC) or connected to a PC.
Qualcomm says the Ventuno Q will be available "soon" at the Arduino Store and through official resellers including Digikey, Farnell, Macfos, Mouser, and RS.
