Unveiling the World ' s First Autonomous Regional Cargo Aircraft ( Modified Cessna 208B ). EchoFlight radar onboard .
And some countries outside Europe also accept CE marks as certification that a product meets their government standards as well , Frankenberg said . “ We definitely have customers now around the world .”
Eyes that fly
Over the past five years , Echodyne has grown from roughly two dozen employees to close to 100 , and it has moved from Bellevue into a new larger facility in Kirkland ’ s Totem Lake neighborhood .
Designated as an essential business because of its defense industry work , Echodyne stayed open during the duration of the pandemic , with about 70 percent of its workforce working from home .
UAV Radar EchoFlight is designed for airspace detect-and-avoid on unmanned aerial vehicles ( UAVs ), offering ultra-low SWaP and rich-data output choices to complement unique hooks for integration with other sensors , like ADS / B . EchoFlight is used by dozens of companies testing sensors for unmanned aircraft missions , from urban air mobility vehicles and longhaul cargo drones to governmental research centers .
They ’ ve been busy , Frankenberg said .
In early 2021 , Echodyne engineers teamed with NASA ’ s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California for tests that prove that the company ’ s compact radars can be used to allow drones to fly autonomously in crowded airspace .
The researchers put the radars on an AiRanger drone , built by American Aerospace Technologies of Philadelphia .
The drone was able to fly itself over 14.5 miles of pipeline , simulating the types of inspection missions that commercial drones are expected to perform in the not-too-distant future .
During the tests , the drone used its Echodyne radars to detect and avoid “ non-cooperating ” aircraft on its own .
This proves that things like self-guiding air taxis and cargo drones are possible , Echodyne Vice President of Marketing , Leo McCloskey , told GeekWire in March .
“ We ’ ve demonstrated that we know how to build the right sort of radar for this mission ,” he told the Seattle-based tech news website .
It ’ s not only flying things that need cheap , lightweight radars , McCloskey added . Self-driving cars also will need them , and he said trials are underway to see how well Echodyne ’ s radars work on the sea . If successful , they could be used to help unmanned boats and barges navigate themselves between islands .
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