Intel is Dead Serious Powering the Next Hardware Revolution and These Technologies Prove it

The Intel Developer Forum(IDF) is running this week in San Francisco. The two day event serves to highlights Intel’s latest innovations for developers and to provide a glimpse to the technologies that the chip maker is expected to release in the near future. Despite its relevance, recent editions of IDF have failed to create excitement within the developer community and have reinforced the stigma that Intel was falling behind innovative rivals like QUALCOMM or NVIDIA. However, this week’s IDF have brought the excitement back to Intel’s developer community with a clear message: Intel wants to power the next hardware revolution.

After missing the mobile computing wave, Intel is set on no repeating the same mistakes and is rapidly jumping into new trends such as drones, IOT and virtual reality. More importantly, Intel is set to make developers an important element of its next generation of products. Certainly, that seems to be the intention of yesterday’s announcements. Let’s take a look:

Joule

Joule is a new board designed to prototype and implement high performance computer vision products. Joule’s goal is to provide a seamless transition from prototype to at-scale implementations of machine vision heavy solutions like robotics or drones. At its core, Joule includes a maker board with an Intel RealSense deep sensing camera optimized for IOT scenarios.

Project Alloy

Project Alloy is Intel’s entrance in the “merged reality space”. Intel’s version of this new industry buzzword includes involves an untethered, wireless VR headset with depth sensing and five-finger tracking thanks to a forward-facing RealSense camera that enables users to move through a space and manipulate it using their hands.

Aero Drones

Another highlight of the first day of IDF was the Aero, a new quadcopter drone aimed at software developers. The Aero is powered by a new Compute Board running a Linux OS with support for Real Sense cameras. The board is also equipped with AirMap technology to enable capabilities such as autonomous flying.