Ten years from now, connected & autonomous aerial vehicles will be part of our everyday lives – flying routinely through our world, inspecting, monitoring, and carrying cargo and people. Our mission is to develop the Operating System that makes this possible.
Our start point is a solution that gives large industrial entities such as electricity grid operators, and their suppliers, the ability to fly fleets of drones safely, to address the widest range of missions, at massive scale:
More efficient
Tight teaming of human and machine. Achieve more with less.
More capable
Advanced technology and permissions. Unlock more missions and capture better data.
Accelerating
Collecting performance data from the fleet and using it to continuously improve autonomy.
World-leading technology and regulatory permissions
We have the lead in facilitating remotely-piloted close-quarter flight in urban and industrial environments (complex, unstructured and evolving environments). Our approach mirrors that used by autonomous car developers. Our core tech teams remote pilots with connected & autonomous machines. It also leverages the cloud to collect performance data from the fleet. This allows us to improve autonomous performance with every flight.
Our solution has been designed to facilitate the widest range of missions, including complex one-off missions in challenging environments, and reactive missions, designed on-the-fly e.g. facilitating inspection with remote expert in the loop.
The end-result is a highly-capable system that continuously improves its efficiency, quality and safety over time.
Our commitment to safety has been recognised by the UK Civil Aviation Authority. We have secured permission by the UK Civil Aviation Authority to trial our concept for routine BVLOS operations – ahead of potentially opening it up to a wider market. This is one of the most advanced drone permissions ever given by a developed-market aviation regulator.
Industrial use cases
Our solution is applicable to almost every drone market vertical, as quite simply, it unlocks a better way to fly. However, our initial focus is on three urgent, valuable and globally consistent use cases: close visual inspection of the electricity grid; close visual inspection and methane emissions monitoring in offshore and onshore gas; and close visual inspection of road and rail infrastructure.
Electricity grid inspection |
Remote, close-quarter inspection. Reducing work at height, costs and emissions. |
Infrastructure |
Facilitating the capture of accurate asset data at scale, to help increase the efficiency of construction, monitoring and maintenance of national infrastructure. |
Oil and gas |
Changing the way work gets done – from flare stack and tank roof inspections, to capital project management, live broadcast emergency response, leak detection and environmental remediation. |
Leadership team experience
Our senior team is ex. Apple, Arup, CERN, McLaren, Oracle Racing and hedge funds. Career highlights include: winning one Formula 1 World Championship; two America’s Cups; leading the team that designed and built the first hybrid engine ever used in a supercar (the McLaren P1); and heading up the European team at Eton Park, a hedge fund with $14bn Assets Under Management.
We are experts in robotics & autonomy; control systems & dynamics; GPS-denied navigation; embedded systems; robust, scaleable software architecture; and high-risk operations.
