- AI-powered drones are vulnerable to jamming, but a Brooklyn engineer has a fix.
- Brian Streem, CEO of Vermeer, developed a Visual Positioning System for drone navigation.
- Streem’s tech is already deployed in Ukraine, aiming to save the Department of War a fortune.
As the wars in Iran and Ukraine grind on, billions of dollars are being poured into autonomous and AI-powered drones. Many see them as the future of fighting.
But, while the technology is advancing rapidly, both manned and autonomous drones are extremely vulnerable to getting jammed or spoofed by enemy signals, which can result in the pricy weaponry getting destroyed.
Long-range Shahed-style attack drones costing $50,000 are built to fly thousands of miles, carrying hefty warheads and complete complicated missions. But, they’re often reliant on glitchy and dated GPS and camera systems.
A Brooklyn-based engineer is working to change that. “We’re offering a cornerstone technology,” Brian Streem, CEO of Vermeer, told me. “AI warfare isn’t going to work unless you have our product.”
Streem, is building a smarter camera with guidance and navigation systems in the drone itself. He has also created a vision-based navigation system (Visual Positioning System or VPS) that relies on electro-optical or infrared cameras feeding an onboard NVIDIA edge computer.
This story is part of NYNext, an indispensable insider insight into the innovations, moonshots and political chess moves that matter most to NYC’s power players (and those who aspire to be).
The system performs real-time terrain matching, celestial navigation, and terminal guidance against pre-loaded maps. The company is also adding evasive maneuvers to the VPS to protect against enemy kinetic interceptors.
The technology is already working in Ukraine, and Streem believes updating American drones with this kind of equipment will save a fortune for the Department of War.
The technology is expensive — it costs around $20,000 to add his VPS to drones — but he believes it ultimately pays for itself.
“The cameras are observing the environment, and in real time, the drone is kind of deciding what to do on its own,” Streem explained