Qualcomm's New Arduino Ventuno Q Is an AI-Focused Computer Designed For Robotics (engadget.com)
- Reference: 0180934048
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/03/09/1716250/qualcomms-new-arduino-ventuno-q-is-an-ai-focused-computer-designed-for-robotics
- Source link: https://www.engadget.com/ai/qualcomms-new-arduino-ventuno-q-is-an-ai-focused-computer-designed-for-robotics-113047697.html
> Called the Arduino Ventuno Q, it uses Qualcomm's Dragonwing IQ8 processor along with a dedicated STM32H5 low-latency microcontroller (MCU). "Ventuno Q is engineered specifically for systems that move, manipulate and respond to the physical world with precision and reliability," the company wrote on the product page. The Ventuno Q is more sophisticated (and expensive) than Arduinio's usual AIO boards, thanks to the Dragonwing IQ8 processor that includes an 8-core ARM Cortex CPU, Adreno Arm Cortex A623 GPU and Hexagon Tensor NPU that can hit up ot 40 TOPs. It also comes with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, along with 64GB of eMMC storage and an M.2 NVME Gen.4 slot to expand that. Other features include Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, 2.5Gbps ethernet and USB camera support.
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> The Ventuno Q includes Arudino App Lab, with pre-trained AI models including LLMs, VLMs, ASR, gesture recognition, pose estimation and object tracking, all running offline. It's designed for AI systems that run entirely offline like smart kiosks, healthcare assistants and traffic flow analysis, along with Edge AI vision and sensing systems. It also supports a full robotics stack including vision processing combined with deterministic motor control for precise vision and manipulation. It's also ideal for education and research in areas like computer vision, generative AI and prototyping at the edge, according to Arduino.
Further reading: [3]Up Next for Arduino After Qualcomm Acquisition: High-Performance Computing
[1] https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2026/03/arduino-announces-arduino-ventuno-q----powered-by-qualcomm-drago
[2] https://www.engadget.com/ai/qualcomms-new-arduino-ventuno-q-is-an-ai-focused-computer-designed-for-robotics-113047697.html
[3] https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/12/28/1855208/up-next-for-arduino-after-qualcomm-acquisition-high-performance-computing
Arduino is dead (Score:2)
The name may still exist but the ethos behind it has evaporated. Have to wonder why Qualcomm even bothered to acquire it.
Re: (Score:1)
Like all capital groups, bleed the IP dry, sell the carcass and then move on.
Re: (Score:2)
It's nothing of the sort. In fact virtually all competitors go out of their way to support or emulate on the same underlying platform, if not the direct hardware pinout than at least support for the framework.
The first party hardware sale from the spat between the founders may be dead, but that's about it.
Meh (Score:3)
> It's designed for AI systems that run entirely offline like smart kiosks, healthcare assistants and traffic flow analysis, along with Edge AI vision and sensing systems.
Yes. Typical Arduino use cases, obviously.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. Oh wait were you being sarcastic? Arduino is an extensible platform. The use case itself is limited only by the underlying hardware. The fact that you may only be able to figure out how to make it blink a light is your failing not someone else's. The underlying framework has already been ported to a variety of hardware options that greatly exceed Arduino's first party hardware offerings.
Re: (Score:2)
The attraction of Arduino is that it's simple enough for non-engineers to understand and make things with. It controls lights, can move things, can make sounds.
AI slop is a somewhat less compelling and less easily understood proposition.
Re: (Score:2)
That's not the point. It's meant to be a foundation for building embedded systems, be it blinking lights to managing various aspects of home automation. But this was certainly not one of the original goals of this project. Qualcomm acquiring it was fine, since most of the projects here are Arm based, but repurposing it as yet another AI platform is just the hijacking of one more project people can use to learn computing
Pricing (Score:3)
Pricing was conveniently left out of the summary. It should be less than $300 in 2Q26.
Too much (Score:2)
It should be $200 in 2Q26. The AI revolution this device wants so desperately to be a part of has driven memory prices up such that it will be $300, and out of the market segment that would use it.
Re: (Score:2)
Really... you could find a bottom of the line computer with better specs.
Plus, how many hobbyists are building pick-and-place machines or robots that choose to follow their owners... or The Latest Craze (slap AI in everything, complete with security holes)?
Don't (Score:3)
Qualcomm is known for their contracts written on flypaper. They have a whole department which does lawyerly things (QTL).
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