Qualcomm sought to beef up its presence in the connected devices space, with the debut of its first family of IoT-specific chips manufactured using a 10nm FinFET process.

The new chips, the QCS605 and QCS603, combine on-device image signal processing and artificial intelligence alongside a multicore ARM processor, vector processor and graphics processing unit. By pushing computing power to the edge, Qualcomm said it hopes to enable “new possibilities” in a number of industrial and consumer applications. These include security, sports and wearable cameras; 180-degree and 360-degree virtual reality cameras; robotics and smart displays, among others.

Qualcomm noted video solutions company Kedacom and Ricoh, the company that offers the 360-degree THETA camera, are already planning to develop products based on the new chips.

Joseph Bousaba, Qualcomm Technologies’ VP of product management, said in a statement the company’s goal in the IoT market is to make “devices significantly smarter”. He added: “AI is already enabling cameras with object detection, tracking, classification and facial recognition, robots that avoid obstacles autonomously, and action cameras that learn and generate a video summary of your latest adventure, but this is really just the beginning.”

At CES in January, Qualcomm president Cristiano Amon touted IoT as part of Qualcomm’s business diversification strategy, noting the segment represented a $43 billion opportunity for the company. Progress is already underway: Qualcomm in January announced IoT partnerships with Google, Amazon and Microsoft to provide support for their respective virtual assistants and is also working with Alibaba and Baidu on smart speaker technologies.