PHL Inno's weekly "Startup Spotlight" feature highlights founders and new businesses cropping up in the region.
The startup: Asylon is a robotics startup that builds software systems for drones and ground robots to automate perimeter security.
Founded: 2015
Home base: Norristown
Founders: Chief Executive Officer Damon Henry, Chief Technology Officer Adam Mohammed, and Chief Operating Officer Brent McLaughlin met at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The trio are aerospace engineers by trade and worked for institutions like Johns Hopkins University, General Electric and Boeing. As the drone industry began to scale rapidly, they saw an opportunity.
“There were a lot of companies focused on building the drone, the vehicle itself. But one other thing that we saw was, unless you can solve the full solution — so that's including the back end, the power, the payload and the data — they were never going to be truly scalable for enterprise customers,” Henry said.
The product: Asylon built DroneCore for security missions. The "drones in a box" are managed at a base station with a robotic arm, which can swap the battery on the drone after it lands so it can continue flying. The drone is designed to withstand all weather conditions, with daytime and nighttime cameras that stream real-time video to the customer for security purposes.
The startup has a 24/7 monitoring center out of its office in Philadelphia staffed by analysts and drone pilots who can log into the systems and fly them for customers. Asylon's headquarters also has a testing center where it performs trials for new features and technologies, Henry said.
Asylon is working with Boston Dynamics and its ground robot “Spot” to integrate its software platform and allow it to be operated remotely and integrated into alarm systems.
Funding: Henry declined to disclose how much Asylon has raised. Its investors include Philadelphia-based Ben Franklin Technology Partners and Blu Venture Investors in the Washington, D.C., area.
Asylon is looking to raise a $5 million to $7 million Series A “pretty imminently,” he said, to continue to increase its customer volume and improve the technology it uses in partnership with Boston Dynamics. The funding would also be used to add 10 more employees to its existing team of 50.
The goal: Asylon is pushing to have the most automated drones deployed in the United States and expand to more customers.
DroneCore is installed on corporate campuses and at manufacturing plants and logistics depots. It does security for the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Army, Ford Motor Co., FedEx Corp. and Verizon, Henry said. Some of its clients have multiple sites using Asylon’s drone security tech.
The startup also wants the Federal Aviation Administration to approve Asylon to operate drones without requiring the pilot to have a line of sight, he said.
“That really allows us to just operate from anywhere in the world and not need the kind of supply and additional manpower at our customer sites,” Henry said. “That’s a critical milestone for us.”
