George Matus was still in high school when he began raising millions for his startup, Teal. The former quad drone racer's pitch to investors was a wish list of what he thought a drone should be. More than just an aerial camera, his quad would be freaky fast and easy to use — even fly in the rain. And, most challenging of all, Teal would think and learn. It would be a platform that developers might use for all kinds of complex applications, from counting a farmer's cows to following a target without using GPS. To do all that, Teal would need a tiny supercomputer…and a digital brain. That would have been impossible just a couple years ago.
But a handful of new technologies — sprung from research labs, small startups, and major tech companies — have converged to make this kind of innovation possible. It's paving the way for quadcopters and self-driving cars that can navigate by themselves. They can recognize what they're seeing and make independent decisions accordingly, freeing them from the old need for an internet connection. Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) lie at the root of this advancement. AI, the scientific shorthand for a machine's ability to copy human traits like thinking and learning, has transformed how we use technology. AI now permeates our life through Apple’s Siri, Google search, and Facebook newsfeeds. But that tech taps into the cloud. Ask Siri for help splitting the dinner tab, and your voice is sent off to Apple servers for some speedy calculations. It doesn't work without the web, or often even with it. “Robots and UAVs can’t depend on that connection back to the data center,” says Jesse Clayton, Nvidia’s senior manager of product for intelligent machines. Imagine the delay if your quadcopter's live feed had to bounce off the cloud before a computer could calculate the safest route. You'd be better off flying manual. That bottleneck has companies racing to build tiny, AI-capable supercomputers.
