A Point Breeze tech company goes global with drone software that can go where GPS can’t

Exyn Technologies goes places GPS can’t always reach. The robotics company has underground-mining and heavy-equipment-making partners and customers on every continent, and is looking to supply gas and energy companies.

Exyn chief field engineer Curtis Linton Jr. and his colleagues demonstrated the company’s new Nexys mapping platform in Exyn’s headquarters, a converted South Philly warehouse, last week. The company says Nexys collects and sends more accurate data faster than the company’s earlier products.

The walls of the headquarters are lined with shelves of black quadcopters and other drones, which Linton and colleagues are refitting with communications and sensor-bearing hardware that runs Exyn software, including fist-sized lidar (light detection and ranging) units. “We add our software to this off-the-shelf hardware, and integrated it into the drone, to our specifications,” Linton said.

“Right now it’s modular: we install the software and connect it to your drones. We’re going to make it so you can buy the software and install it yourself, so your drones and devices communicate directly and your fleet is autonomous,” said Justin Lehmann, an Exyn marketing manager.

The mining companies use Exyn systems to map mines where it’s difficult to send human surveyors or collect data from cameras. The builders use the systems to check progress and security on building sites.

“We think autonomy is the future for drones and for ground robots, for places that are dirty, dull, and dangerous, where you don’t necessarily want to send a person,” said Brandon Torres Declet, Exyn’s chief executive. “This system you can put in a backpack or onto a handheld [device]. What the customer cares about is the intensity of the cloud of data we are measuring. They need a really accurate map.”

“We spend a lot of time underground,” added Raffi Jabrayan, head of sales. He noted that many deep mines are adopting fully electric vehicles ahead of surface trucking, despite heavy battery weight and need for charging facilities that have so far left electric long-haul trucks a rarity. Underground, electric vehicles have the advantages of avoiding the need for exhaust ventilation and hauling diesel fuel.

Torres Declet adds that jobs lost to drones in the field tend to balance against new jobs created to analyze the vast data Exyn software collects and put it to work extracting, processing, and selling products.

Torres Declet took the top job last year after founding CEO Nader Elm departed following nine years at the helm. Exyn’s lead investor is Delaware-based Longview Innovation, affiliated with U.K.-based IP Group PLC. Another investor is India’s Reliance industrial group.

With 45 people, half based at its offices in Point Breeze, “we’ve become a global company,” said Torres Declet, who previously headed and sold Measure, a Washington-area drone software developer, and advised antiterrorism agencies for the U.S. government and New York City.

Exyn’s clients include New York-based Turner Construction, Japanese builder Obayashi, Chile’s Codelco state copper company, Sweden’s Sandvik engineering group, miners in Africa and Australia, and Canada’s Dundee Precious Metals and its Bulgarian copper and gold mine.

Former CEO Elm started Exyn nine years ago in partnership with Vijay Kumar, then head of University of Pennsylvania’s robotics lab, now its engineering school dean, said Michael Burychka, managing partner at investor Longview. “Every venture capitalist was making drone investments,” recalled Burychka. “But drones are just an application. The real technology is the software, which at Exyn is unique, in its autonomy.”

Drones have transformed battlefields in recent wars, sparking an arms race to build efficient airborne weapons. U.S. military interest in drones has advanced in response to the threat, and managers at Philadelphia-area Boeing, Leonardo, and Piasecki helicopter factories and Berwyn-based TE Connectivity, which makes aircraft sensors, are developing products to meet demand.

Exyn’s staff, with its Penn roots, is aware of that demand and the company has taken a stand against military applications of its technology. Though Exyn’s systems are used by governments, a company policy commits Exyn staff to uses that “do not put lives at risk. We do not support the weaponization of our autonomous systems,” and will not work on “weaponized autonomous systems” or licensing.

Exyn expects to be looking for a new home soon. “Our lease runs out in 2027. I’m a city guy, I think it’s great we are here close to major universities. My preference is to grow the business in the city,” said Torres Declet.

“But we might outgrow this space. We have tons of things in production and in quality assurance and quality control. So we’ve been talking to the mayor’s office, and the governor’s office. They’ve sent people who have spent hours learning about our company,” he added.

City officials are “connecting Exyn with local and regional partners” and looking for ways to help it grow here, affirmed Alba Martinez, the city’s new commerce director, in a statement. “Exyn Technologies is a world-class asset,” and city leaders under Mayor Cherelle L. Parker have “committed to advancing Philadelphia as a hub for technology companies,” Martinez added.