At CES 2017, Alarm.com announced plans to develop autonomous, video-enabled drone applications to extend the capabilities of smart home and business security systems. Alarm.com’s multi-sensor awareness and property intelligence, together with the Qualcomm Snapdragon Flight drone platform, will deploy drones to investigate unexpected activity. The drones will be designed to autonomously navigate through the property and provide a high-resolution video feed to the property owner.

Alarm.com’s Insights Engine applies machine-learning algorithms to the growing data set generated by devices and sensors in a connected property. By recognizing complex activity patterns and detecting anomalies, Alarm.com can proactively respond to events on behalf of the user, the company reported. Alarm.com intends to leverage these insights to intelligently deploy video-enabled drones to the location where unexpected activity was detected or when an alarm was triggered. Strict, opt-in privacy controls will enable the property owner to easily share the video feed with a central monitoring station and emergency responders.

“This is a very interesting application for drones, which at their core are essentially flying cameras, and by using other advanced capabilities of our Snapdragon processors, Alarm.com is designing a whole new way to provide security to properties,” said Hugo Swart, senior director, product management, Qualcomm Technologies Inc. “The Qualcomm Snapdragon Flight platform pushes the boundaries of the drone industry and has led to many new form factors and use cases, and Alarm.com, with its security expertise, is taking commercial and residential security systems to the next level by integrating intelligent and cutting edge drones to its solutions.”

Daniel Kerzner, Alarm.com’s chief product officer, said, “Alarm.com has been a pioneer in the smart home and business security space. By analyzing data across the devices on our platform, we have created unique capabilities that make properties safer, smarter and more efficient. We’re excited to use Qualcomm Snapdragon Flight to develop similar applications for drones. Our intelligent drone deployment system will be designed to provide targeted video in response to specific events around a property, augmenting fixed location cameras and enhancing the active security perimeter for homes and businesses.”