Sony's phone arm is working on drones
Sony is teaming up with robotics company ZMP in a new collaboration, Aerosense. The project will launch next month and aims to combine Sony's camera sensor technology with ZMP's automated driving and robotics know-how, to make an autonomous robot for image capture that uploads directly to the cloud. The company expects to launch a drone platform "tasked with measuring, surveying and inspections" within the next year.&nbsp;
Sony is teaming up with with a robotics company it's already invested in, and it's looking to get on board with that whole drone thing. ZMP (which aims to make the "robot of everything") develops automated driving technologies -- although they've stuck to solid ground until now. The collaboration will be called Aerosense -- and will launch next month. According to Sony's announcement the collaboration will bind Sony's camera, sensor and comms tech with ZMP's automated driving and robotics knowhow. Sony Mobile will hold the majority share (by a sliver of a percentage), but the team-up's end result is to develop and make autonomous drones for image capture, connecting all that output to the cloud. Don't expect to see a branded Sony drone anytime soon, however: it's looking to business clients, with these eventual drones tasked with "measuring, surveying, observing, and inspecting" sometime next year.

[Image credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images]