Exyn in partnership with Easy Aerial to develop drone

The innovative platform is capable of creating a digital twin of an underground mine autonomously, rapidly, and with reliable accuracy

Exyn Technologies, a pioneer in multi-platform robotic autonomy for complex, GPS-denied environments, announced earlier this year that they would partner with Easy Aerial to launch their new flagship airframe, the ExynAero EA6, integrated with ExynAI and optimised for Exyn’s diverse use cases.

“In early 2021, we started evaluating US-made airframes for our next generation of aerial robotic platforms,” said Nader Elm, CEO of Exyn Technologies. “We sought to find a product partner that shared our mission and would be an active collaborator in building an ExynAI-specific robot to be used across the industry verticals we address. In our search, we found a compatible airframe in the Easy Aerial Osprey and an incredible team behind it that would jointly propel us forward.”

Evolution of industry requires evolution of product

Exyn had been using the DJI M210 as its main airframe for mining and commercial customers. However, with the M210 product transitioning to end of life, Exyn needed to source its new flagship airframe. This airframe was needed to continue to meet commercial customer demands, and be US-made to comply with US government customer requirements. Beyond sourcing a new airframe manufacturer, Exyn was searching for a new partner with a product that would be capable of evolving with them.

After an extensive evaluation of different airframe manufacturers, Easy Aerial was selected as the preferred partner. By stepping into a new, customised platform Exyn has greater flexibility on future adaptations of the product based on customer feedback. Exyn also benefits from the option to expand its offerings to include EA's drone-in-a-box solution, automated charging, and remote operations to further automate their autonomous robot.

Easy Aerial and Exyn, both agile and dynamic startups, were able to quickly and nimbly adjust to customer feature requests, supply chain constraints, new sensors, and specialised configurations. In addition, Easy Aerial and Exyn are ISO-9001 certified and Easy Aerial is AS9100 certified, which will help facilitate quality production of the ExynAero EA6.

Partnerships boosting industry

“Exyn and Easy Aerial share a common vision of automating monitoring solutions," said Ido Gur, CEO of Easy Aerial. “Many of our customers share the same operational needs of autonomous drone-based robotics to operate in the most demanding environments, so this partnership was a no-brainer. We’re ecstatic to be working alongside Exyn, supporting our enterprise and government customer base.”

The Osprey platform is beneficial to Exyn in its business verticals like mining and construction, but as a Blue sUAS certified platform by the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), it is especially advantageous for Exyn’s work in the government sector. The Osprey is a hexarotor airframe that provides motor redundancy in case of failure. The platform offers longer airborne endurance, while maintaining a slightly smaller form factor than the M210 and accommodates increased thrust capabilities.

Exyn’s products gather data in a complete and efficient manner to create a digital twin of the mine, gathering the 3D point clouds and using them to create 'meshes', which are models of the stopes. Given such complete data, the technical services team is able to make decisions about the quality and volume of the blasting for example. This information is available to them immediately after the scan.

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