Intel's UAV segment GM Anil Nanduri talks about RealSense cameras, why Intel got into drone business, their product roadmap, and where the industry is headed
Intel is flooding the skies with drones, doing everything from sending them out to inspect massive solar arrays in the Mojave Desert …
Context & Ripple Effects
By early 2017, Intel had assembled a drone stack piece by piece: it bought German drone maker Ascending Technologies at the start of 2016, shipped Project Euclid as a compact RealSense module for robots that summer, and closed the Movidius acquisition to pull drone vision chips in-house. With the hardware in place, UAV segment GM Anil Nanduri's job in this interview is to explain the 'why' — and the roadmap.
The answer Intel gives is industrial, not consumer: drones inspecting massive solar arrays in the Mojave Desert show what RealSense-equipped aircraft are actually sold on. The interview also lands mid-arc for Intel's broader strategy — the same month, second-in-command Venkata Renduchintala was fielding questions on drones, cars, and the death of mobile Atom chips.
First-order effects
- Industrial inspection customers — solar-farm operators among them — get a vendor pitching an integrated package of RealSense cameras, Movidius vision silicon, and Ascending-derived flight platforms rather than separate components.
- Drone makers evaluating navigation stacks now face a choice between building on Intel's perception hardware or competing against it, since Intel owns cameras, chips, and airframes.
Second-order effects
- Rival perception-silicon and depth-camera suppliers are forced to respond to a competitor that can bundle sensing into flight platforms, pressuring them toward their own platform deals or design wins outside Intel's stack.
- Intel's push validates industrial inspection as the near-term revenue case for drones, pulling integrators and sensor vendors toward solar, infrastructure, and survey work ahead of consumer demand.
Third-order effects
- The endgame visible in later coverage confirms the structure: Intel ultimately spun RealSense out as an independent AI robotics venture that raised a $50M Series A from MediaTek Innovation Fund and Intel Capital — perception hardware maturing into a standalone business rather than staying a captive chipmaker feature.
- If the pattern holds, large semiconductor companies enter adjacent robotics markets through acquisition, integrate vertically, then carve the units out once they need dedicated capital and focus.
The trend: PC-era chipmakers are diversifying into machine perception through vertical acquisitions, with drone autonomy as the first commercial proving ground before units spin out on their own.