Google Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz Wednesday announced a $10.7 million investment in Airware, a company that is creating a common platform for UAS that will allow developers to create industry-specific applications for unmanned aircraft without worrying about the specific underlying hardware. The company is run by Jonathan Downey, 29, who wants to be the Bill Gates of the commercial UAS industry.
There are a range of potential applications for UAS in the commercial market, including agriculture, mapping, monitoring power lines and inspecting drilling rigs. Andreessen Horowitz estimates that the market for UAS in agriculture, to monitor crop health and spray pesticides, will be a multi-billion dollar market, said Chris Dixon, a general partner at the venture capital firm. Mr. Dixon says he hopes experts in precision farming will build apps on top of Airware’s platform, much like Adobe Systems Inc. built Photoshop on Windows.
Airware’s Mr. Downey says he sees a lot of parallels between the commercial UAS market and the early PC industry. There are a plethora of small companies making UAS, open source projects and hobbyists at one end of the spectrum, and larger companies involved with military projects at the other. Airware is one of the first companies developing a professional commercial solution, he said. Mr. Downey wants to make it possible for a developer to be able to create a precision imaging app without worrying whether the hardware is a helicopter or a multi-rotor vehicle or a fixed-wing aircraft, he said.
The platform, built using Linux, also keeps UAS airborne. It has an application programming interface and software development capabilities so companies or third parties could create their own applications. In the future there could be an application, say, for targeted pesticide spraying in agriculture or one for monitoring rust and corrosion in drilling rigs.
One of the challenges UAS will need to overcome is their association with the military, where they’re used for reconnaissance or killing missions. Mr. Downey says he sees a bigger opportunity in commercial applications. “In the military, there’s one customer and one purpose – the military tends to fly unmanned aircraft to point a camera,” said Mr. Downey. Instead, he envisions companies using UAS for jobs that are dangerous like inspecting windmills or power lines. Mr. Downey says his company has not taken any money from the U.S. government and is entirely funded by private investment.
Currently, it’s not legal for private industry to operate unmanned aircraft systems in the United States. That’s expected to change once the Federal Aviation Administration issues rules for UAS use in U.S. airspace. Those rules are expected by late 2015. In the meantime, Airware has been shipping hardware and software to UAS manufacturers in other countries including France, Kenya and Australia.
Many UAS manufacturers have expertise in physically building airframes but not in the aerospace flight guidance, controls and programming needed to make them run. Companies such as Delta Drone, based in France, incorporate Airware’s hardware, a tiny two-inch rectangular hardware box that contains GPS, navigation systems, a datalink radio, a computer running Linux, and software into their own unmanned aircraft. Delta Drone rents vehicles to companies for a range of tasks including skier search and rescue and the monitoring of mining operations. Delta Drone then takes the raw images the UAS gathers and turns it into information a mining company can use about the location and composition of stockpiles of earth removed in mining operations. Airware software would help control autonomous take-off and landing, the camera tilt and the telemetry downlink among other tasks.
By using Airware, Delta Drone didn’t have to create a custom product for every customer, said Fabien Blanc-Pâques, Chief Technology Officer for Delta Drone.
Airware founder Mr. Downey is a licensed pilot who comes from a family of pilots. At MIT as an engineering undergrad, he began experimenting with drones when he entered a collegiate competition. After college, Mr. Downey worked on an autonomous helicopter R&D project at Boeing Co. He founded Airware in May 2011.
Source: Wall Street Journal