As of February 28th, 2022 Robota has dedicated 11 years of service to its customers. Over this span, Robota has developed hardware and software solutions applicable to a range of industrial applications including land surveying for mining and reclamation, agronomy, construction, forestry, environmental protection among others. Here’s a rundown of Robota’s top solutions and how they came to be.
Robota began by offering the Goose autopilot for customer installation into fixed-wing drone platforms. The Goose made it easy to convert a remote control airplane into a drone with automatic takeoff, landing, and navigation.
Robota Goose Autopilot for Fixed-Wing Drones
In order to reduce integrators’ time and costs of deploying custom solutions, Robota began offering the Triton fixed-wing drone. Triton is based on the remote control platform, E-flight Apprentice. The same RC platform was later adopted by PrecisionHawk as the Lancaster drone.
Robota Triton Drone Landing in 2011
SuperNova was developed in order to serve the needs of customers with larger payloads, with the capability of navigating for 1hr with 1lb of payload. SuperNova was based on the Mulitpilex Mentors RC aircraft and converted to fully automatic navigation from takeoff to landing with the Goose Autopilot. SuperNova performed flawlessly in the Outback challenge of 2014, where it was used in competition to locate a target and deliver 500 millimeters of water to it. The same Multiplex Mentor platform was also adapted by TopCon as the Sirius Pro.
Dual Camera Payload for SuperNova Drone.
Using RC airplane kits proved to be a limitation in capability in categories of portability, supply chain, and customization. Through dialogue with customers, Eclipse was conceived with the first delivery taking place on Robota’s 5th anniversary. Eclipse offers customers a photogrammetry drone with long flight times, short runways, portability, efficiency, and tight integration with cameras and RTK GNSS.
Eclipse Fixed-Wing Photogrammetry Drone
Through experience gained with RTK drones and customer input, RoboDot, a low-cost, practical, and easy-to-use RTK GPS base station was designed. RoboDot serves photogrammetry applications, machine control, and traditional surveying applications to name a few.
In 2021, Robota was approached by Kemik to solve the problem of flying hundreds of drones at a time to create drone light show formations. While the application isn’t directly related to surveying and measurement, all of the prior development in terms of precision measurement and navigation could quickly be formulated into a new product, the RoboGlow drone light show system. The system targets an entirely new market, that of entertainment, branding, and advertising.
Over the past 11 years, It has been our pleasure to offer more capability, time savings, and results with practical surveying and drone products. We are grateful to our team members and customers for their support and feedback. Most notably, Vertical Aspect has played an appreciable mentorship role in the development and testing of our surveying solutions.
As always reach out to see how Robota can help achieve your precision measurement or navigation need.