Qualcomm Dragonwing To Power Next-Gen Autonomous Warehouses and Smart Kiosks
Today at CES, Qualcomm signaled its dominance in the burgeoning world of Physical AI by unveiling a massive expansion of its industrial and robotics portfolios. This expansion ought to put the company in position to be a comprehensive provider of edge computing technology for everything from tiny smart cameras to full-size humanoid robots.
Central to this transformation is the completion of five strategic acquisitions over the last 18 months: Augentix, Arduino, Edge Impulse, Focus.AI, and Foundries.io. By integrating them together, Qualcomm has created a unified ecosystem that bridges the gap between independent developers and global enterprises. The acquisition of Augentix, in particular, bolsters Qualcomm’s ability to deliver high-resolution, low-power vision systems for the mass market. To further support this hardware, the company introduced the Qualcomm Insight Platform, an AI-powered video intelligence service that uses large language models (LLMs) to turn raw video feeds into actionable data in real-time.
The hardware centerpiece of this announcement are the new Dragonwing processors. The high-performance Dragonwing Q-8750 is designed for drones and media hubs, featuring an AI engine capable of 77 TOPS. This level of performance allows the chip to run massive on-device AI models with up to 11 billion parameters without cloud connection. For more everyday consumer devices, the Dragonwing Q-7790 provides 24 TOPS of performance, meant for things like smart TVs and cameras to process advanced video and security tasks locally.
Qualcomm is also pushing aggressively into the robotics sector with its new Dragonwing IQ10 Series (not to be confused with the IQ-X), a processor specifically engineered for humanoids and industrial autonomous mobile robots (AMRs). This system leverages the same full-stack architecture used in automated driving to provide the reasoning and adaptation skills necessary for machines to operate in real-world environments like factories and retail stores. To show off the tech's readiness, Qualcomm demoed the Motion 2 humanoid, developed in partnership with Vietnam-based VinMotion, and the K1 Geek robot from Booster at their booth.
Complementing these processors is a suite of advanced services, including a Terrestrial Positioning Service that uses a network of over 9 billion Wi-Fi access points and 100 million cellular towers to provide precise location data where GPS often fails, such as underground or in dense urban areas. Furthermore, Qualcomm now offers AI On-Prem Appliance through Edge Impulse integration, allowing customers to train and deploy massive AI models up to 120 billion parameters in a secure, offline environment.
No major announcements for Qualcomm's automotive Snapdragon Digital Chassis this year, though, especially since the Cockpit Elite and Ride platforms were rolled-out in late 2024. The company did state that Digital Chassis is the number one global provider for vehicular digital cockpits, currently found on more than 400 million vehicles.
