By Shiri Epstein, NoCamels -
The sleek, agile drones of today are not the clumsy and cumbersome drones of yesterday. With ever-improving technology, these unmanned aircraft are impressive both for their maneuverability and range of capabilities.
And in the case of one company whose battle-tested products are in use by the Israel Defense Forces as its troops wage war on Hamas in Gaza, they can even snatch other drones out of the sky or trundle into tunnels where an unknown fate awaits.
Based in Omer, close to the southern city of Be’er Sheva, Robotican has been developing largely or fully autonomous drones that can be used in multiple situations, believing that they were missing from the market.
Its Goshawk drone – a counter-UAS (unmanned aircraft system) designed to detect, track and destroy other craft – bears the name of a bird of prey that grapples its enemies mid-flight.
This fully autonomous aircraft sits in what Robotican calls a “smart nest,” a metal box-like device, waiting for its opportunity to strike.
“Once the radar gets the signal that a hostile drone has infiltrated the no-fly zone, the Goshawk nest opens and it will take flight, chase the drone and catch it,” Shmaya Bender, business development and customer success manager at Robotican, tells NoCamels.
According to Robotican, the Goshawk has already intercepted more than 250 enemy drones.
To bring down its enemy, the Goshawk flies above the hostile drone and fires out a net to ensnare it. If the hostile drone is too heavy or if the Goshawk senses other threats, the net is sent plummeting to the ground with its victim trapped inside. Otherwise, it bears it safely to earth unharmed.
According to Bender, using a net is the safest way to eliminate hostile drones as it does not rely on spoofing – sending fake GPS signals to the drones – manipulating radio frequency, or using jabbers – disruptive signals that cause a drone’s operating system to malfunction. Spoofing and jabbers are illegal in certain sensitive areas such as airports, because of security concerns.
While the Goshawk is solely airbound, Robotican’s Rooster drone can make use of the skies and the ground to carry out its missions.
The Rooster is a hybrid of three different drones engineered to act as one in order to penetrate areas where most other unmanned craft cannot, such as deep underground.
The drone can both fly and roll along the ground bearing a range of payloads, such as thermal cameras, effectively making it a multiple threat.
“We have given the police, military personnel and first responders a Swiss Army Knife of capabilities,” says Bender.
“Essentially, it can adapt to the mission with one system and you don’t have to use several platforms.”
The Rooster can fly for 12 minutes, move through terrain for 40 minutes or remain stationary for up to five hours. When all three capabilities are used in tandem, the drone can carry out missions for around 90 minutes, which the company says is three or four times longer than most electric-powered drones on the market.
Beyond that, Bender is clear that he cannot go into further details of the Rooster’s military capabilities. The company, however, says the drone can repair itself and is designed to function without communication from an operator.
Robotican, founded in 2013 by three mechanical engineers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, is currently bootstrapping its costs and has no external financial investment.
All its funds come from the sale of its drones and other projects, and as such the company largely focuses research and development to cater to Israel’s Ministry of Defense.
Being independent, Bender tells NoCamels, means that all of the ingenuity and creativity remain in the company.
“Our platforms come out after years of research and development of different technologies,” he explains. “At the end of 10 years [of R&D] and dozens of projects developed, there may not be a product, but all the know-how is within the company.”
The products that do make it to market include an autonomous robotic kit (ARK), which when mounted on any robot makes it self sufficient, and a software as a service (SaaS) platform called Sphera, which is used to develop drones and can simulate any weather or other scenario.
With Sphera, Robotican can run tests in the simulator before the drone is even produced. In fact, Bender explains, about 90 percent of the development of Robotican drones is carried out using Sphera.
“It helps us to reduce costs and it really helps us to develop that much faster,” he says.
Robotican’s future, Bender predicts, lies in the production of its autonomous robots, among them the two combat drones. He says the company has a “great roadmap” for the Rooster, including the development of more advanced payloads such as devices that can operate in areas with high levels of radiation.
And as the global demand for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) grows, so too does the dependence on counter-UAV products such as the Goshawk and sophisticated hybrids like the Rooster.
As such, Robotican hopes to place their drones in critical locations like airports, military bases and oil fields. The Rooster drone already has approval under the United States’ National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), making it eligible for use in the US.
“We do see a bright future for both systems,” says Bender. “The sky’s the limit.”
