AeroVironment Acquires UAS Navigation Solutions Provider ‘Planck’

AeroVironment has acquired Planck Aerosystems, Inc. (“Planck”), a provider of advanced unmanned aircraft navigation solutions.

The acquisition will significantly accelerate AeroVironment’s development of advanced autonomy capabilities, the company said in an official release.

Founded in 2014, Planck has worked closely with customers from the U.S. Department of Defense, security agencies, allied governments and offshore industrials to develop customer-centric unmanned aircraft solutions. Planck’s products include embedded technologies and fully integrated unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and leverage their deep technical expertise in UAS guidance and navigation, autonomy and artificial intelligence.

Planck is a small technology company based in San Diego, California and will be acquired by AeroVironment’s Petaluma-based medium unmanned aircraft systems (MUAS) business segment to focus on integrating its flight autonomy solutions, such as ACE (Autonomous Control Engine), into AeroVironment’s offerings to enable safe, autonomous takeoff and landing from moving platforms on land or at sea in GPS-denied environments. Other solutions include AVEM, a fully integrated mobile tethered sensor platform designed for persistent autonomous operation from moving vehicles and vessels in any environment, and a suite of machine-learning object detection and tracking systems that are customized for specific end-user needs.