Airspace security startup Dedrone took first place at the ThunderDrone’s “Game of Drones” outdoor demonstration that was held last week at the Nellis Air Force Base and hosted by AFWERX. The winning team comprised of Dedrone, Echodyne Corporation, Squarehead Technologies and Battelle beat out five other teams in the final of three ThunderDrone events—each focusing on countering small, unmanned aerial drones. ThunderDrone is a U.S. Special Operations Command and SOFWERX initiative.
The finalists were narrowed down from 93 counter-drone technology companies formed teams. In the end Team Dedrone successfully demonstrated the capabilities of a layered detection, tracking, classification and mitigation solution that defends protected airspace against aerial drone threats.
Based in San Francisco and founded in 2014, Dedrone’s fully automatic counter-drone platform integrates technology from key industry partners via its DroneTracker software and RF sensors that includes: Echodyne’s MESA™ radar and Squarehead Discovair acoustic sensor. When DroneTracker identifies a drone, Battelle’s DroneDefender™ automatically triggers, defeating the drone and eliminating the threat.
Dedrone’s investors include: Felicis Ventures, Menlo Ventures, and John Chambers, Chairman Emeritus of Cisco Systems.
Washington-based Echodyne is backed by Bill Gates, NEA, Madrona Venture Group, Vulcan Capital, and Lux Capital among others. Its innovative high-performance radar sensors provide high-resolution 3-D situational awareness data for autonomous vehicles, unmanned aircraft systems, critical infrastructure security, and public safety.
Florida-based SOFWERX leads collaboration between special operations warfighters and select contributors from industry and academia to bring drone technology to the special operations community.
