Kratos Defense & Security Solutions Inc. recently cut the ribbon on its new 100,000 square foot UAS production facility, which is located in the Will Rogers Business Park in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.  According to Kratos, the new facility will be used to accommodate existing and expected increased demand for its newest line of high performance, jet powered unmanned aerial tactical and target UAS. Kratos says that over the next five years, it plans to hire at least 350 employees in Oklahoma. Kratos says that these employees will fill the “high-skilled engineering, design, and manufacturing functions” that will be needed to support the production contracts for these aircraft. 

This week during the International Symposium on Experimental Robotics conference, MIT researchers will present a paper in which they describe an autonomous system for a fleet of UAS that would enable UAS to search for lost hikers in forests. GPS signals used to guide UAS can be unreliable or nonexistent in forest environments, so the MIT researchers propose a strategy where UAS only use onboard computation and wireless communication—effectively eliminating the need for GPS—as they collaboratively search under dense forest canopies.

A provider of high-resolution weather data and alert services called CustomWeather Inc. has partnered with TruWeather Solutions LLC to produce “unique, high resolution” forecasts to support UAS. The companies will offer UAS operators that need high resolution data TruWeather Solutions’ proprietary model that includes terrain-capturing resolutions at 1,000 meters. The model is complemented by CustomWeather’s own proprietary CW100 model to “provide solutions at even more granular 100 meter resolution,” the companies say.

​Automated drone startup Airobotics has announced a $30 million Series D round of funding, which brings its total capital raised to $101 million. Based in Israel, Airobotics says that it will use this round of funding to further scale its operations in the U.S. and Australia. Recently, Airobotics launched its North American headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona. From this location, Airobotics will run all North America, South America and Central America operations. The Scottsdale office will also become the company’s global headquarters as Airobotics continues to scale.  Airobotics will also use this latest round of funding to continue servicing the mining industry and other industrial facilities across the world.