Red Cat Holdings has announced its Teal Drones unit has secured exclusive rights to equip its flagship Golden Eagle UAVs with autonomy enhancing Autodonyne software.
Red Cat, itself a software specialist for drone sector hardware, said the licensing agreement would permit Teal to load Autodonyne’s autonomy expanding capabilities on Golden Eagle drones shipped to government and military clients. The company called the performance capacities added by that “exclusive” to its tactical UAVs.
Central to that will be the operation of craft in swarm operations; Teal had previously demonstrated the improved flight proficiencies of multiple autonomous Golden Eagle drone operations incorporating Autodonyne software.
Those included what the Red Cat called “unlimited surveillance” services provided by the continual rotation of numerous UAVs over a single observation point, enabling uninterrupted, 24/7 monitoring by vehicles automatically relieving one another between recharging stints.
Read: Teal to roll out four-drone, single-operator mini-swarm platform
In explaining the agreement, Red Cat said Teal obtained exclusive rights to equip Golden Eagle drones with Autodonyne software packages to enhance “autonomy and exchange of control among humans and machines to perform tasks involving crewed and/or uncrewed vehicles.” Those capacities will be provided to future and existing clients of single or multi-UAV purchases, beginning later this year.
The Golden Eagle is designed for short-range recon missions, and carries a next generation FLIR Hadron Dual Camera EO/IR payload with dual-axis stabilization. It boasts a maximum fight time of 50 minutes at top speeds of 50 mph and is equipped with a muscled-up CPU and GPU for real-time edge processing of computer vision and AI applications.
The craft is is among the handful of UAVs on the Blue sUAS list meeting Department of Defense requirements. Teal has been retained in small craft military development programs, and earlier this year joined other US aerial tech firms providing secure and effective drones to the Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion.
The addition of Autonodyne’s automation enhancing software to Golden Eagle drones, says Red Cat CEO Jeff Thompson, the new partnership is intended to provide an added boost to Teal’s ambition to become the leading reference in tactical aerial tech among defense and security clients.
“Teal’s products have repeatedly proven in testing that they can handle difficult mission-specific assignments with ease and offer autonomous capabilities that are superior to other drones,” Thompson said. “Autonodyne software will only be made available to Teal, effectively jumping Teal ahead of other drone companies seeking to provide multi-vehicle control or capabilities like unlimited surveillance. Competitors will have to develop their own software or secure licenses from others with inferior test performance.”
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