A growing robotics startup snagged a $6.5 million U.S. Marine Corps deal that'll keep it busy through 2024.
As part of the Marines contract, Tomahawk Robotics Inc. will make robotic systems safer and easier to control for the Marines, the company announced this month. Meanwhile, the 53-person company expects to hire more than 20 people by the end of 2023, Tomahawk Proposal Manager Tom Kennedy told Orlando Inno via email.
Despite its name, Melbourne-based Tomahawk Robotics doesn't build robots. Instead, it makes Kinesis: an artificial intelligence-enabled, universal robot control system.
This newest contract follows up on a $4.1 million Marines deal Tomahawk secured last year. The 2021 deal was for technologies that give the Marine Corps a common way to control unmanned systems in the air and on the ground.
The $6.5 million contract, part of the Marines' Autonomy and Robotics Enhanced Multi-Domain Infantry Squad (ARTEMIS) program, calls for Tomahawk to integrate six unmanned systems and multiple ground radios into the Kinesis system. The work will take place from 2022-2024, entirely in Melbourne, Kennedy said.
"This is another major step forward in our work to deliver AI-enabled universal robotic command and control for our men and women in uniform," CEO Brad Truesdell said in a prepared statement.
Meanwhile, Tomahawk is on a steady growth trajectory. The four-year-old firm has seven open positions listed on its website that it plans to fill by the end of the year. Plus, Tomahawk aims to hire 14 engineers in 2023, Kennedy added.
Tomahawk is a former member of Melbourne small business incubator Groundswell Startups. In 2020, the growing company moved from a 4,000-square-foot office attached to Groundswell to an 8,500-square-foot building down the street. Tomahawk this year moved again, recently relocating to a former Walgreens in Melbourne that's nearly twice the size of it latest office. The company still maintains the Irwin Street facility.
Brevard County, aptly named the Space Coast, is known as one of the world's premier rocket launch hubs thanks to Kennedy Space Center and Patrick Space Force Base. However, the county's economy has strengthened in the last decade due to the addition of commercial space/aviation, manufacturing and defense employers, said Lynda Weatherman, president and CEO of the Economic Development Commission for Florida's Space Coast.
The county's unemployment rate is down from 10% in July 2012, not long after NASA retired the Space Shuttle program that employed many on the Space Coast, to 2.7% in July 2022, according to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That track record will continue, as Brevard County's economy is poised to "mature" further with the addition and growth of finance firms, supply chain businesses and software companies, Weatherman added. "You’re just seeing the beginning of this golden age in Brevard County."
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