How Do Military Drones Fly Without GPS? | Ian Laffey, Theseus

The Theseus founders met at the El Segundo hackathon, got into Y Combinator two weeks later, and flew their first GPS-denied drone navigation prototype two weeks after that. Today, just 7 months later, they've completed long-distance tests on base with American special forces.

I got to sit down with Ian Laffey, Theseus CTO, to ask a bunch of technical questions about how the product works. (And he only had to tell me "sorry, that's a secret" one time.)

I hope you enjoy the convo!

Timestamps
00:00 — What is Theseus?
00:37 — What role does GPS play in modern conflict?
04:27 — What are the state of the art drones, and where did Theseus start?
07:35 — How did the company get started so quickly?
16:32 — How does GPS-denied drone navigation work?
21:56 — How can you defeat countermeasures & make the product resilient? ("If I say anything, my co-founders will kill me.")
24:11 — Why visual spectrum and not other sensors?
30:20 — Why is hardware so hard?
32:32 — How can you iterate quickly when building hardware?
38:21 — What's it like to build a hardware company as part of Y Combinator?
41:11 — What will Theseus demo before demo day?
42:27 — How do you move fast as a defense company?
47:30 — How well does the current prototype perform?
51:39 — What's next?

[thorwaldjohanson]

I work in airborne ai ISR, and wrote all the Geospatial / geolocalizing code. This problem is being worked on by many actors. While their approach will be limited, focusing on making it dirt cheap could definitely have a big impact. Would be fascinating to chat with them.

[kj]

IMU, An inertial measurement unit is an electronic device that measures and reports a body's specific force, angular rate, and sometimes the orientation of the body, using a combination of accelerometers, gyroscopes, and sometimes magnetometers. When the magnetometer is included, IMUs are referred to as IMMU

[MaxR]

God damn it I'm so dumb. Glad there's smart people like this!

[xmlviking]

Real question: Are they publicly traded yet? LOL The sensors (IMU) augment its positioning with a primitive Dead Reckoning system. Very similar to inertial navigation systems. I'm sure it has accelerometers, gyros etc. on board. Subs did that back in the day with orthogonal gyros and accelerometers to sense acceleration and eventually velocity. Offset with gyros in same planes X, Y, Z combine with current "this case wind" sensors.

[HeathLedgersChemist]

If you edited the video to remove all of the 'like's, this would be like, you know, like a 2 minute video.

[engineeranonymous]

Anyone interested can search SIFT (Scale-Invariant Feature Transform), SURF (Speeded-Up Robust Features )algorithms for how it might be done. They already have implementations ready and other algorithms exists as well . Scene matching have already been used by Tomahawks you can search reference dtic ADA315439. The real problem with scene matching is surfaces like water, sand, snow. surface without any distinctive features. Your navigation system will not be all weather (reference dtic ADA366122) anyway. Good luck with your endeavor, but I will bet on micro ring laser gyroscopes for navigation with my money.

[GNARGNARHEAD]

that's really cool, but I'd bet they're going to leap ahead with their tech real soon.. very cool

[Laotzu.Goldbug]

Maybe I am greatly overestimated the accuracy, but I'm surprised that there isn't more implementation of celestial navigation. considering how cheap sensors are, from CCD to thermal, it seems like it would be relatively simple to get a sky facing array that can check location along with INS and other things without needing any external signals input.

I'm sure it's not precise enough to hit small like a specific vehicle or structure but it could definitely be used for route navigation?

[pete_dl]

The question i would have asked is have they gone to great lengths to prevent "bad actors" from reverse engineering the technology from downed drones ? I would think this would be a top priority. Eg. auto-zapping of flash memory if power is lost

[feelfree.]

AI cannot increase the SNR (signal to noise ratio) of a given sensor

[ben]

The US, including his company are not leading in this tech. He has also exposed his lack of understanding as to why vision based GNSS denied navigation works - IMHO the reason he is doing it this way is purely because this technique is done effectively already by existing solutions in production . The other thing I notice is their bold claims, "best GNSS denied navigation", yet still no impact on the frontlines. Borderline fraudulent. Another claim that his solution works above 1km AGL, well that is not hard. It is easier the higher you are for vision based solutions, since you get to see bigger and more features. If your cells (of the grid) are small, you need bigger models and datasets. There are a lot more I won’t/can’t say. Because defense is nationalistic, they may receive enough funding and support to make it viable, but I suspect they’ve got a long way to go before being useful outside of tests.

[engrtennis]

Interesting but they said this is a dual-use technology about 10 different ways without actually saying it. Hopefully they know to sell this outside the US they should need government sign off. Not ITAR but definitely EAR. Hate to see them as a case study on future export control training

[AdvantestInc]

The use of AI to enable drones to navigate without GPS is a brilliant leap forward. It's fascinating how Theseus is solving challenges that could change defense strategies on a global scale.

[SpongeBob-xhir]

Under 10, 000$ cheap lol, its 100x cheap they know army pay well.

[sguploads]

I like how founders don show real problem 1) clouds/mist/sun position is actually can change they way system operates so this tech will fail 2) there is millions of other cheap ways to navigate in this way - made even in 60xs - without gps - like emiting signal from 2 radiostation, position of sun and many other ways wich is actually very realible. 3) the whole thing is not for drones - let be clear - its possible adding this tech to rockets - ie himars are now missing more targets than ever - and NOONE will allow small startup to get their hands inside HIMARS.

[Steven-nxcw]

Ai does not need to replace the pilot it just need to help

[BrandonPoulton]

Just don't get bought out by Anduril...

[SpongeBob-xhir]

So he just diy 😂 lol any fpv people can make this lol

[afterglow]

Those war bros must be the worst kind of bros. They are like a combination of cryptobro, fratbro, Ai bro. The worst of the worst

[GhVost]

Hey guys, why don't you dampen your crying out about the things you are dealing with? I understand that you want to show off and promote your company, but Russia, China, and Iran are listening to you and are bright-minded enough to replicate your solutions (and make them even more potent). You will eventually need to deal with it on the receiving side.