Larimer-based KEF Robotics, an aerial autonomous drone developer, announced it received a $1.5 million contract award from the U.S. Army's Applications Laboratory to further fund the development of the startup's technology.
It's the single largest contract award for the company, which first launched in December 2018.
More specifically, KEF said the funding will better enable it to build out the computer vision algorithms it needs to have its tethered drones fly autonomously in an urban environment and under day or night conditions. The startup said such development will accelerate its effort to make a vision-based autonomous flight system for any aircraft, including those that operate in areas without access to GPS signals.
"Our platform-agnostic, attachable approach to aerial autonomy positions us well to provide safe tethered flight in dynamic and complex environments," KEF Robotics Co-Founder and Principal Investigator Eric Amoroso said in a press release. "The tethered system allows us to tightly couple the visual sensing on the ground vehicle and Small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS), from which our system uses both machine learning and stereo vision techniques to probabilistically map difficult hazards like power lines and tree branches."
KEF's tethered approach to drones involves connecting the aerial systems to power and data cables that are anchored to the ground. The startup said this allows for its drones to remain in the air "nearly indefinitely without recharging, providing a local, continuous overwatch capability to ground assets."
KEF plans to also use the funding to explore different ways to have these anchored ground bases become more mobile and is theorizing about the possibility of having these bases attached to a moving vehicle instead of a stationary place.
