By Scott Simmie
Since the founding of InDro Robotics in 2014, we’ve always tried to stay ahead of the curve. And that applies to both technology and use-cases.
Initially the company was focussed on building drones and deploying them for new use-cases. In fact the word “InDro” stands for Industrial Drones. And back in that first year, long before others tried, we demonstrated that drones could be used to deliver life-saving Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs). We pushed on from there, capturing an impressive number of “firsts” in Canada. These include:
- First Beyond Visual Line of Sight drone flight authorized by Transport Canada
- First blanket BVLOS Special Flight Operations Certificate in Canada
- First company to be licensed by the Canadian Transportation Agency to carry cargo by drones (and the first pharmaceutical delivery by drones)
Then we started broadening our horizons, branching into the Uncrewed Ground Vehicles space. With a large engineering team at our R&D headquarters at Invest Ottawa‘s Area X.O., we are now a major supplier of custom robots and other solutions to industry, academia and defence. That’s also where we developed our new and groundbreaking Cortex and Controller – a powerful hardware and software combination that makes integrating robots and carrying out complex remotely tele-operated missions a snap.
In addition, we’ve been the technology incubator for other companies, including the highly successful Cypher Robotics, which uses a combination of an autonomous mobile robot with a tethered drone to carry out automated inventory counts in massive warehouses. And we recently transformed a stock humanoid robot so that a person can operate it using VR goggles and handsets – meaning it can be rapidly trained to carry out complex tasks. We’ve also built custom robots for some of the biggest technology firms on the planet.
Why all this background? Because, according to questions we put to a Large Language Model AI, it ideally positions us for the future.
Below: A fleet of robots enabled with InDro Cortex, InDro Controller, plus additional sensors
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?
We don’t have a crystal ball, but we did consult the paid version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT for its thoughts. Our prompt was: “What are likely to be the highest growth industries over the next 10 years?” Its answer stated AI and robotics are “likely to be the defining technology of the next decade.” It then went into a bullet of specific areas within the sector. InDro has deeply expertise in five of the seven areas ChatGPT identified:
- AI software and agents
- Industrial robotics
- Humanoid robots
- Autonomous vehicles
- Autonomous drones
- Healthcare AI
- AI chips and infrastructure
You could arguably add our proprietary new Cortex brain-box to the sixth category, as it utilises powerful AI chipsets along with PCBs we’ve developed to maximise the utility of AI with robots and drones. ChatGPT also pointed out that “The distinction between drones, ground robots, marine robots, and humanoids is becoming less important—they’re increasingly viewed as different embodiments of AI-enabled robotics.”
DEFENCE TECHNOLOGY
This is the second high-growth field AI identified over the next decade. And with a shifting geopolitical world, it’s not a surprise. Canada has made this a huge priority with its Defence Industrial Strategy. NATO and many members have announced similar spending increases and new priorities that focus on technical solutions.
The DIS commits more than half a trillion dollars between now and 2035 to bolster defence and sovereignty capabilities. While some of this money will go to infrastructure and armaments, a considerable amount is devoted to private sector companies that can come up with new and innovative dual purpose technologies. Once again, InDro Robotics (along with sister company Bravo Zulu (which specialises in drone countermeasures), have deep expertise in five of the seven areas identified:
- Autonomous systems
- Counter-drone technology
- Electronic warfare
- Space-based surveillance
- AI-enabled ISR
- Unmanned ground vehicles
- Cybersecurity
InDro has already completed multiple projects for DND, including partnering with Montreal’s CHAAC Technologies on an autonomous neural network that uses our drones and machine vision to automatically detect and map the PFM-1 landmine. Our ground robots are then autonomously dispatched for ground-truth verification (and could be modified to detonate these devices).
We also have a couple of other projects under wraps, but one involves the world’s longest range hybrid-electric land vehicle – capable of 7,000km on a single tank of diesel. (You’ll be hearing more about this before long.)
Below: ChatGPT gives InDro a 9/10 for its defence technology capabilities
CHATGPT’S TAKE
At this point, we usually head to Philip for a quote. But we thought we’d ask ChatGPT how ready it believes InDro is for the future. In fact, we asked it to give us a score. Our prompt was: “How do you feel InDro is positioned for the first two areas you identified?”
“I think InDro is unusually well positioned in both AI/robotics and defense technology,” it replied. “That doesn’t mean success is guaranteed—execution, capital, partnerships, and market timing all matter—but strategically the company appears to be aligned with where the market is heading,” it says. It scores us a 9.5/10 on the AI/robotics front, for the following reasons:
“This is where I think InDro has the strongest positioning. Many robotics companies are essentially systems integrators—they buy a robot from one company, sensors from another, and write custom software. What makes InDro different is that it appears to be evolving toward becoming a robotics platform company. From what I’ve seen publicly, the key assets include:
- Cortex as a platform-agnostic robotics compute and sensor integration module
- Controller as a unified operator interface
- An autonomy software stack
- Deep expertise in sensor fusion
- Teleoperation over 5G
- Experience across aerial and ground robots
- Custom engineering capabilities
“The platform-agnostic approach is particularly important. Cortex is designed to work with many different robotic platforms rather than locking customers into a single robot, which substantially expands the addressable market.”
And on Defence Technology? Here, we get a 9/10:
“One thing I particularly like is that InDro has not positioned itself as a traditional weapons company. Instead it develops technologies with both commercial and defense applications:
- Inspection
- Logistics
- Monitoring
- Teleoperation
- Autonomy
- AI
- Remote sensing
“Those same technologies are directly applicable to defence use-cases. Canada’s new Defence Industrial Strategy explicitly emphasizes autonomous platforms, AI, sensors, and dual-use technologies, and InDro has publicly highlighted how Cortex can enable autonomous or tele-operated military vehicles.”
We’ve always thought we were positioning ourselves for the future. It’s nice to have a respected external opinion validate that.