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Wireless network group Ondas buys American Robotics for $70 M

Licensed wireless data network specialist Ondas Holdings announced it has acquired enterprise drone maker American Robotics in a deal valued at $70.6 million. Ondas’s software-based wireless broadband capacities are intended to strengthen performance of American Robotics’ fully automated unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).

Better communication for improved drone analysis

The deal aims to provide clients in utility, industrial, and agricultural sectors with enhanced communications and internet-of-things (IoT) application capacities in American Robotics drones. As a result, the partners say, in-flight performance and information analyses of American Robotics UAV will be considerably improved, giving customers a bigger data bang for their droning buck.

American Robotics was the first – and to date, only – company to receive Federal Aviation Administration approval for beyond-visual-line-of-sight drone flights without a human ground controller. Its UAV operate with American Robotics patented Scout System. That links the fully automated, artificial intelligence-enhanced Scout drone, a weatherproofed charging and computing dock, and front-end management and analytics software in a single operational network.

Those capacities will now be integrated into Ondas’s technology offer. That is based upon Ondas’s software-based radio FullMAX platform. The company says FullMAX deepens use and efficiency of IoT applications by overcoming bandwidth limitations of legacy private licensed wireless networks. 

$100 billion commercial UAV market

That, pledges Ondas CEO Eric Brock, will provide clients in railroad, utility, oil and gas, transportation, aviation, and government activities more powerful, secure networks of their own from which to draw and analyze vital operational information.

At the end of the day, the drone industry’s product is data, not aircraft. The drone is the ultimate data gathering edge device for mission critical operations, solving a huge pain-point for Ondas’ industrial and government customers and ecosystem partners. American Robotics’ full stack IP portfolio is a complete system enabling Ondas to turn these pain-points into growth opportunities fueled by more rich data collection.

Combination of the two platforms also broadens American Robotics’ founding strategy of offering a full range of solutions through a single, automated turn-key package. Through their union, the two new partners believe they can provide clients the deepest and best possible industrial drone service in what they estimate to be a $100 billion commercial UAV market.

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Avatar for Bruce Crumley Bruce Crumley

Bruce Crumley is journalist and writer who has worked for Fortune, Sports Illustrated, the New York Times, The Guardian, AFP, and was Paris correspondent and bureau chief for Time magazine specializing in political and terrorism reporting. He splits his time between Paris and Biarritz, and is the author of novel Maika‘i Stink Eye.