Robotics Business Review

Start-up Profile – Autonodyne – Reducing the Cost & Complexity of Commercial, Civil & Defense UAS Ops

Autonodyne provides a HW and SW ‘platform’ for commercial, civil and defense unmanned aerial systems (UASs) including a control station, on-board mission computer, and advanced autonomy behaviors. Recent partnership deals are a capabilities signifier.

Start-up Profile – Autonodyne – Reducing the Cost & Complexity of Commercial, Civil & Defense UAS Ops

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Editor’s Note: Robotics Business Review’s coverage emphasizes innovation, including start-up companies (or ‘young’ companies). RBR “Start-Up Profiles” highlight individual start-up companies using a consistent, templated format that makes for quick, yet informed reading, that also simplifies comparative analysis.




Autonodyne LLC – Company Profile


 






City:
Boston
State:
MA




Country:
USA
# of Employees:
28




URL:
www.autonodyne.com
Founded:
2014








Founders – Dan Schwinn, Chairman and Steve Jacobson, CEO


Funding Status – No outside investment. Self-funded via bootstrapping.






Autonodyne is working with a number of like-minded partner companies looking to expand our complementary technology to increase the product and system-level value propositions.






Autonodyne LLC – Offerings Profile






Primary Target Markets – Defense / Security, Public Safety, Transportation


Technology / Product / Service(s) – We are a software AI company specializing in control of autonomous vehicles.  We do this by creating mobile Common Control Stations, autonomy behaviors, and autonomy software engines.  We do this for the civil and defense markets and currently do this for air and land-based vehicles.


Value Proposition – One of our products is a common control station – meaning we do not have to put any hardware or software on a vehicle, using software “wrappers” instead.  This reduces complexity and cost, while at the same time, often providing more autonomy, capability and functionality to the vehicle than it was natively born with (we call it “additive autonomy”).


It also means that an operator need only be familiar with one interface and can control a variety of disparate vehicles, vastly cutting down on training and proficiency requirements.  Finally, because of the autonomy capability and the fact a single operator can simultaneously control 5, 10, or more vehicles, more missions can be performed with less humans needed for control.


Demand Drivers – Our technology, products and services are in demand across a number of established and emerging sectors. For example, we enable drone delivery by supplying all of the mission planning and mission execution software (e.g. autonomous route planning, precision landing, landing zone sanitization, real-time intercept of mobile delivery trucks, etc).


In the areas of small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS), law enforcement, outdoor rescue, and military tactical unit units are all seeking low cost, highly capable systems to perform missions that previously put humans in peril or were not possible without an easy set of “eyes in the sky.”


This same technology is supporting the emerging Advanced Aerial Mobility air taxi systems.




… our larger customers are Government actors such as the US Department of Defense, the FBI, and state law enforcement organizations.




Autonodyne LLC – Business Model(s) and Competition






Business Model – The principal sources of revenue for Autonodyne are:


    

  1. Funded development by the customer (“Non-recurring engineering”);
    2. 

  2. Software licensing of the technology for 3rd party operators and customers;
    3. 

  3. Services (currently have several UAS services with State and Governmental organizations);
    4. 

  4. Product Sales.
    5. 



We are also fortunate enough to have access to the global aviation sales and marketing channels established by the commercial avionics company from which we spun off.


Partners – Autonodyne is working with a number of like-minded partner companies looking to expand our complementary technology to increase the product and system-level value propositions.  Examples include a number of drone vehicle companies (we add functionality to their drone, they add more market penetration for us), drone delivery technology companies (e.g. secure drone landing “mail boxes”, mobile launch and recovery platforms, etc), airspace approval technology companies, and sensor providers.


We have found that partnerships such as MassRobotics have been invaluable to our outreach and exposure to opportunities and potential partner companies.


Customers – In terms of incoming revenue, our larger customers are Government actors such as the US Department of Defense, the FBI, and state law enforcement organizations.


Competitive Landscape – From our perspective, the industry is slowly transitioning from the pre-competitive stage to one that has a number of competitors with maturing technology.   We also believe the market demand is growing at the same, or higher rate, meaning there is room for more market entrants and more innovative companies to enhance and mature their technology to really be able to serve the wide-ranging set of use cases.


Now that we have a number of the building block pieces, we are stringing them together to be able to autonomously perform semantic reasoning to build contextual awareness of the environment and for the software we’ve built to use that contextual awareness to divine a gameplan and execute that plan, all under the watchful eye of a human “overlord”.  This can range from actual drone delivery services, to swarms of vehicles acting in collaborative manners (e.g. defense missions, search and rescue missions, environmental monitoring missions, etc.) We view this as the next true capability level and see a number of software AI companies trying to do the same.


We spun off from an established technology company that creates avionics for FAA-certified aircraft and that gave us a great head start when compared to the competition, both in the technology and in the ability to reach the markets that are creating the demand




Autonodyne LLC – Recent News





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