Autonomous Drone Use Cases
What Autonomous Drones Do in the Field
Autonomous aerial robots use on-board vision and navigation to inspect, patrol and deliver in places where GPS is unreliable and a pilot cannot always see the aircraft. ModalAI's drone perception and communications systems, designed and assembled in the USA, give an aircraft that autonomy: visual inertial odometry for GPS-denied flight, obstacle avoidance, on-board AI, and 4G/5G or long-range radio links for beyond-visual-line-of-sight work.
| Use case | What the aircraft does | Who is doing it on VOXL |
|---|---|---|
| Safety and communication | Reconnaissance and threat detection for soldiers and first responders, on NDAA-compliant hardware. | DARPA OFFSET swarms, Blue UAS Cleared Select FPV |
| Indoor inspection and inventory | Counting stock, checking security alerts and patrolling facilities after hours without GPS. | Gather AI, Corvus Robotics, Cleo Robotics |
| Outdoor asset inspection | Aerial inspection of utilities, infrastructure and crops that keeps people off towers and out of traffic. | Inspired Flight, Corvus Drones greenhouse drones |
| Drone delivery | Autonomous, contact-free delivery beyond the range of a hand-held controller. | Uber Eats BVLOS testing |
The Platform Behind Them
Each of these runs on the same stack. VOXL 2 and VOXL 2 Mini put the flight controller and an AI companion computer on one Blue UAS Framework board; Starling 2 Max is the ready-to-fly development drone for GPS-denied work; Stinger Vision FPV is the Blue UAS Cleared Select aircraft for indoor reconnaissance. Start with VOXL 2, read the case studies, or browse by industry.