Intel buys German company that makes flight-planning software for drones

Intel has acquired MAVinci, a German company that makes software for planning flights with drones. It is the second German drone company to acquire Intel this year. The acquisition amount has not been disclosed.

MAVinci, which has twenty employees, will join Intel’s New Technology Group and will collaborate with Ascending Technologies, also German. That is a manufacturer of drones and associated intelligent software systems, which was acquired by Intel in early 2016. Intel presented its first ‘own’ drone for industrial applications in October, based on a model from Ascending Technologies.

According to Anil Nanduri, head of the UAV department at Intel, MAVinci makes the best flight planning software in its class. He says this in an interview with VentureBeat in which the acquisition is announced. The German company makes desktop software for planning flights over large areas, among other things.

Intel sees drones for industrial applications as well as for consumers as an interesting market. The company wants to be able to supply the software and hardware itself to make advanced drones possible. According to Nanduri, a drone flight can yield about 50GB of data; Intel sees opportunities in offering systems to process that data.

Last year, Intel invested in Chinese drone manufacturer Yuneec, and that manufacturer has released a drone that uses an Intel RealSense camera for obstacle avoidance. Intel announced its own development boards with the same technology in April, which can be used for DIY drones.

MAVinci Mission Control Software