maxon Partners with Open-Source Champion Auterion to Galvanize Drone Industry

Strategic partnership will offer industry changing avionics and propulsion system integration for software-defined drones that mark future of drone scaling.

Drive specialist maxon - whose precision electric motors are enabling the autonomous helicopter Ingenuity and rover Perseverance to explore Mars - announced today its partnership with Auterion, the company building an open and software-defined future for enterprise drone fleets.

Customers will benefit from the most advanced, open ecosystem of avionics and motors integration in the drone industry, which joins Auterion’s module Skynode and maxon’s best-in-class BLDC motors. The imple-mentation uses open-source standardization that’s critical for the drone industry’s next phase of enterprise scal-ing and smooth workflow management. Across every commercial, government and non-profit use case, open ecosystem integrations support component upgrades and mixed portfolios of small, medium and heavy-lift drones, carrying a wide variety of specialized payloads or cargo.

The partners are delivering maximum energy efficiency, flexibility, safety and performance to customers by pursuing an optimal systems interplay between maxon’s high-precision motors, electronic speed controllers (ESC) and matching propellers — connected to the complete Auterion platform. The joint goal is to leverage both companies’ know-how to make drone operation, development and fleet management easy for customers at dramatically reduced costs. The companies will explore long-term opportunities around propulsion systems and autopilot communication, data sharing and real-time monitoring.

Addressing Regulatory Reality with Breakthrough Systems

Companies are turning to western-made options that are well-known and reliable for their open-source needs. “The partnership between Auterion and maxon provides access to the very best drone technology that also addresses impending federal legislation in the United States,” said Kevin Sartori, co-founder of Auterion. “We’re seeing utility companies and others that specifically require drone service providers to offer systems compliant with regulatory executive action. Ultimately, our open-source, software-defined ecosystem - built with outstand-ing partners like maxon - is what will instill greater trust in drone components and autonomous technologies.”

Bringing Together Partners with Proven Expertise

A strong partner network that advances state-of-the-art drone technology to solve customer problems is a goal shared by both Auterion and maxon. Eugen Elmiger, CEO of maxon Group, said, “With our motors in NASA's Ingenuity helicopter, we flew on Mars. Now we are focusing on drones on Earth, which will play an important role in the automated future. I am very pleased that we are entering into a cooperation with Auterion, sharing our knowledge and experience so that we can better serve customers in the dynamic drone market. Their expertise in drone software coupled with our 60 years of experience as a global motor and drive specialist will generate promising solutions for the future.”

With unique capabilities, unmatched expertise. and a long, proven history of designing and developing high-precision electric motors and motion control modules, maxon is poised to make industry changing contribu-tions to the drone market and the future of autonomous crafts.

Auterion’s expertise in developing complete drone software stacks comes from its unique experience building Pixhawk and shaping the PX4 autopilot software, which has become the most used open-source flight control system for autonomous aircraft in the world. Auterion’s Skynode, made in the U.S. and marking a next-generation advancement for the Pixhawk standard, supports all different types of airframes, versatile payloads controlled via an SDK, LTE cloud connectivity and advanced onboard computation and apps.

Sartori added, “This partnership marks a new phase in software-defined drones and open standardization. To-gether with maxon, we’ll offer a complete set of components to build state-of-the-art drones that scale to meet enterprise needs.”