Iris Automation builds optical camera–based detect-and-avoid computer-vision products (the Casia system) intended to replace a pilot’s last line of defense and enable beyond-visual-line-of-sight drone operations. Its Casia v2 offers significantly longer-range object detection. The company has been working with the FAA in an integrated pilot program to demonstrate the system in two use cases. Iris plans to use new funding to improve and extend its technology and to provide demonstrations of efficacy to regulators to help simplify standards for pilotless flight. Strategic partners such as Sony (imaging sensor expertise) and Verizon (connectivity for fleet management) are cited as valuable for scaling operations. Jon Damush took over as CEO earlier this year as the company positions itself to capture growing commercial UAV demand, including COVID-19–driven tailwinds in public safety and agriculture. Iris Automation is an industrial drone company developing automated sensing systems for collision avoidance on airborne commercial drones. The company is led by CEO and co-founder Alexander Harmsen and CTO and co-founder James Howard. It is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, and San Francisco, California. Iris Automation raised $8M in a Series A round led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from Bee Partners. It intends to use the funds to expand its team of engineers, which already includes Ph.D.s in computer vision and hires from NASA and Boeing. The company plans to scale its technology to participate in the White House UAS Integration Pilot Projects. Iris Automation develops camera-based "sense and avoid" computer vision that analyzes onboard drone video in real time to detect obstacles and guide maneuvers. The system is designed to emulate a human pilot's vision and decision-making and targets industrial unmanned aerial systems that cover long distances and operate over changing infrastructure. Iris builds its technology for original equipment manufacturers that lack in-house collision-avoidance expertise. The company plans to use a newly raised $1.5M to move from beta to commercialization, run an early adopter program, and perform extensive simulation and real-world flight testing. Its team includes an R&D director, Alejandro Galindo, who holds a PhD in computer vision from INRIA, and early employees with backgrounds in mechatronics, firmware engineering and sensor fusion. Iris competes with other vision and SLAM systems such as Area 17 (a17), Intel RealSense, Parrot's SLAMdunk and DJI's Guidance systems. Iris Automation develops a visual collision-avoidance system that provides drones with real-time situational awareness. Its product combines off-the-shelf chips and proprietary software to process visual data and tell a drone's autopilot how to avoid obstacles. The system is designed to be agnostic and compatible with various drone and autopilot manufacturers, including DJI, Flirety, PrecisionHawk, Micropilot and Airware. Iris's systems are already in use in test flights with select partners, including 3DRobotics. The company has raised $500,000 in pre-seed funding from Bee Partners and Y Combinator. Iris plans to establish or relocate an R&D and business office to California.

Total raised

$23M

Funding rounds

4

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Dec 2020