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Increasing levels of autonomy are helping to make drones more useful for commercial use. Exyn Technologies, which has developed autonomous aerial robots for complex, GPS-denied industrial environments, today announced the ExynAero and ExynPak. The company said its new drone and sensor system expand its technology offerings for collecting data from challenging and previously unmappable environments.

Philadelphia-based Exyn spun out of the University of Pennsylvania’s General Robotics, Automation, Sensing & Perception (GRASP) Laboratory. The company said its full stack of autonomous systems serves mining, construction, logistics, and military applications.

ExynAero includes autonomy, agility, and accuracy

Exyn Technologies said the ExynAero is an upgrade from its previous A3R system. The drone is fully autonomous and can map environments including GPS-denied, human-inaccessible, industrial sites without a pilot. The enables users to keep their employees safe while maximizing beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS) data collection and communications, said the company.

The new technology builds on the company’s ExynAI software, which can mesh multiple data streams in real time. The ExynAero’s software can also automatically merge data from various sensors and platforms to build a robust map of an environment, even with multiple units running simultaneously, Exyn said.

The ExynAero includes a 270-degree view, providing detailed in-depth visuals of stopes in full HD color, bright lighting, and lidar to provide top acuity, shooting over 300,000 beams per second for highly accurate visualizations, said Exyn. The company added that ExynAero’s flight stack and agile navigation provide stability and robustness in tight spaces, and the system can easily transfer data to team members who can analyze it.

“The ExynAero represents the future of data collection across a number of applications and industrial environments,” stated Nader Elm, CEO of Exyn Technologies. “The product is the first of its kind to offer true aerial autonomy. The ExynAero can fly itself in the most challenging and unknown environments, collect the data, and merge the streams with ExynAI on board. This allows for maximum data collection and a radical improvement in safety for workers around the world who are placed in difficult and sometimes potentially dangerous conditions.”

“We’re hoping with the launch of this product and the additional modalities offered by the ExynPak that our customers will be able to collect the data they need easily, regardless of limitations,” he added. “The benefits of this will lead to not only significantly greater worker safety, but also considerably improved productivity and efficiency.”

ExynPak offers portability

The ExynPak provides a new portable format that enables users to unstrap the autonomy features of the ExynAero and simply capture data with the built-in tools via other modalities — such as hand carry or vehicle mount — for situations where complete autonomy is not needed or practical.

Exyn Technologies said ExynPak will allow it to apply its core technology to more use cases and environments involving existing infrastructure or transportation modes that don’t require an aerial or autonomous component. Exyn said it plans to continue to develop new products to help support mapping and data collection, regardless of format, with more products coming out in 2021.