XTEND, the developer of XOS, an AI-driven operating system that is revolutionizing the way humans interact with drones and robots, has announced its $40M Series B round, led by Chartered Group, with further participation from its existing and new strategic investors, including Clal-Tech.
The new funding will further develop XTEND’s proprietary XOS operating system and its application in various time-consuming, dangerous enterprise and security scenarios worldwide. XTEND will also ramp up global sales of its own drones and robotics products.
XTEND provides a revolutionary human-supervised, AI-driven drone and robot operating system that enables operators to perform highly complex and dynamic missions in any environment with minimal training. When drones and robots are controlled by XTEND’s patented XOS operating system – which fuses the best of human intelligence and machine autonomy – it provides a new way for logistics, public safety, inspection, defense, and security professionals to interact with machines effectively from a safe distance.
XTEND’s team believes that as the use of drones and robots become more prevalent, professional human oversight remains crucial, and therefore developing a seamless collaboration between humans and AI, where each play to their strengths for optimal results, is vital.
Aviv Shapira, co-founder, and CEO, explains: “Robots and drones promise to transform everything from factories to our homes. However, a significant hurdle remains – equipping them with the common-sense abilities to deal with the unpredictable nature of real-world situations, understand their surroundings, and make decisions based on that information. XOS uses AI to enable robots to learn from data and experience.
Training them to identify objects, navigate complex environments, and interact with humans safely. We are unlocking the true potential of robotics in complex scenarios, including first response, search and rescue, logistics, critical infrastructure inspection, defense, and security.”
“Our XOS operating system is based on “Practical Human Supervised Autonomy” which empowers drones and robots to handle specific tasks autonomously – entering buildings, scanning floors, or even pursuing suspects. However, crucially, it allows the “common sense” decisions – like judging situations or adapting to unforeseen circumstances – to remain in the hands of human supervisors.
This human-machine teaming allows our robots to work alongside supervisors, who can manage dozens of robots simultaneously, and learn from that experience. That is why we believe that XOS will become the operating system of choice for anyone looking to maximize their robotic systems’ potential while decreasing the risks posed to their teams’ lives or concerns around lack of human oversight.”
Hundreds of XTEND’s drone and robotics systems are already operationally deployed worldwide, and the company is continuously developing its XOS operating system and those platforms to deliver the future of human-machine teaming. XOS is hardware agnostic, which allows it to control all sorts of platforms, including third party devices, complement existing technology, or create entirely new systems from scratch. XOS’s open architecture means that it can host applications developed by other companies, too.
Matteo Shapira, co-founder, and CXO, adds: “Unlike self-driving cars, which operate in a world with mostly known rules and scenarios, XTEND specializes in enabling operations in “hypervariable” environments. Take a last-mile delivery robot. It can navigate autonomously indoors and outdoors but might need human help finding an office building entrance or understanding floor layouts to reach the elevator or stairway.
These environments present limitless situations with the potential for the unexpected, requiring human-level decision-making skills specific to each profession. XTEND’s core technology, XOS, is built around this human-machine partnership. We are continually adding new “AI SKILLS” to our system, and those skills will allow robots to handle a growing portion of missions and tasks, freeing up human supervisors to manage more missions simultaneously, at scale.”
Eyal Agmoni, Founder and Chairman of Chartered Group, said: “We believe that the companies bringing the value of AI to massive and complex industries, such as robotics and drone operations, will be the tech giants of the 21st century. Having observed XTEND’s remarkable achievements thus far, we truly believe in the company’s potential to become the world leader in robotics and drone operations, and AI.”
XOS has been developed for multiple markets, including logistics, public safety, inspection, and security. The U.S. Department of Defense Special Forces and Israel’s Ministry of Defense tier-1 units have also chosen XTEND for multiple multi-million-dollar programs to develop and deliver its systems for operational evaluation, so the company’s technology is already being used by some of the best in the business.
“There are certain areas where NeoGeo is pushing the boundaries. One of them is continuously investing in research and development to stay at the forefront of emerging technologies such as AI, ML, Blockchain, and edge computing”, says Sreeramam GV, Founder & CEO, NeoGeo Info in an interview with Geospatial World.
The NewSpace sector in India is growing at a rapid pace. How do you see the role of geospatial service providers evolving in this emerging ecosystem?
NewSpace sector in India is growing at a rapid pace, driven by advancements in technology, government initiatives, funding, and the increasing involvement of private players, including a thriving start-up ecosystem. Geospatial service providers play a crucial role in this emerging ecosystem.
Being the downstream value providers for space technologies, our role is expected to evolve in several ways, from enhancing mapping “There are certain areas where NeoGeo is pushing the boundaries. One of them is continuously investing in research and development to stay at the forefront of emerging technologies such as AI, ML, Blockchain, and edge computing”, says Sreeramam GV, Founder & CEO, of NeoGeo Info in an interview with Geospatial World.
Cutting-edge R&D Driving Sustained Growth and surveying to increase the use of SAR data in new application areas. NeoGeo would actively participate and create value for different sectors, via our innovative solutions.
What would be the impact of Artificial intelligence, Machine Learning and other frontier technologies on the geospatial marketplace in India?
Artificial intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and other frontier technologies (IoT and blockchain specifically) are set to have a profound impact on the geospatial marketplace in India.
These emerging technologies grant various benefits such as enhanced decision-making, precision, and efficiency in operations. This helps in developing precise scientific models, gaining better intelligence, and system-driven results for reliable outcomes.
From an urban planning and smart city point of view, the AI-powered geospatial analytics system can support urban planners in designing and managing smart and resilient cities. It can also help optimize infrastructure, traffic flow, waste management, and energy consumption for sustainable and resilient urban areas.
Traditionally, AI and ML have generated a lot of value in enhancing the interpretation of remotely sensed data, improving accuracy and efficiency in applications such as land cover classification, climate monitoring, and disaster assessment. Emerging technologies are also spurring economic growth and innovation. This can lead to the development of new applications, services, and business models, attracting investments and fostering entrepreneurship.
What is the long-term vision of NeoGeo in the Indian market?
There are certain areas where NeoGeo is pushing the boundaries. One of them is continuously investing in research and development to stay at the forefront of emerging technologies like AI, ML, blockchain, and edge computing.
We are also seamlessly integrating these technologies to provide innovative geospatial solutions. To understand the unique requirements of key sectors in India, NeoGeo is offering customized solutions for different stakeholders (e.g., cross-country infrastructure, urban planning, transportation, disaster management) and tailor-made offerings (products and platforms) to address their specific challenges.
We are also looking to expand geographically and explore collaborations with international players to tap into global markets and gain exposure to diverse geospatial applications and best practices. Fostering a culture of adaptability within NeoGeo is crucial to our long-term vision. We want to have the capability to quickly respond to market changes, technological advancements, and emerging opportunities.
UK imaging sensor manufacturer, Teledyne Space Imaging has provided the key imaging and sensor instrumentation for the EarthCARE satellite, an advanced Earth climate monitoring project scheduled to be launched into space in May 2024 and jointly implemented by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
The EarthCARE satellite will launch from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, US on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Its mission is to enhance human knowledge of the role that aerosols and clouds play in our planet’s climate system. The satellite will use Teledyne Space Imaging’s instrumentation to capture data that will be sent back to the ground to assist in environmental monitoring and future decision-making. EarthCARE stands for Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer.
The EarthCARE project represents ESA’s biggest and most complex Earth Explorer mission to date. The satellite was designed and manufactured by a consortium of more than 75 companies, under prime contractor, Airbus. It will measure global profiles of aerosols, clouds and precipitation, focusing on radiative fluxes and derived heating rates. The EarthCARE satellite will orbit around 400 kilometres above the surface of the Earth in order to get as close as currently possible to the aerosols and thin clouds that are of particular interest.
Teledyne Space Imaging has provided a custom charge-coupled device (the CCD243) for the satellite’s ATLID instrument. This LIDAR instrument has a high-spectral resolution receiver and depolarisation channel to ensure the delivery of high-quality atmospheric data.
This specialist CCD has a high temporal resolution allowing it to capture detailed vertical profiles of aerosols and thin clouds via sophisticated sensor technology. The imaging sensors have been designed and optimised to operate at a wavelength of 355nm. The CCD243 sensor has dimensions of 6×6 pixels, 30 microns square, from which the signals are combined into a single pixel for each atmosphere layer.
Gabriela Druitt, Director of Engineering at Teledyne Space Imaging says, “Our sensor technology will help the ESA and JAXA EarthCARE satellite deliver crucial insights, not only into how aerosols, clouds and precipitation influence the impact and effect of solar and infrared radiation on the planet, but what this could mean for how we tackle climate change. We are proud to be involved in such an important, ambitious Earth Exploration mission and excited about the launch in California that is rapidly approaching.”
Teledyne Space Imaging is a leader in engineered and complex space solutions, manufacturing advanced electronics, imaging and sensor systems for operation in the growing global space economy.
Partnering with the Geospatial World and National Remote Sensing Centre of IRSO, the EarthSight Foundation supported a special segment – DigitalMaps@Work in Villages.
This segment addressed the concern that geospatial information and services are grossly underutilized in making grassroots- level interventions for protecting livelihood, ensuring food and water security, and facilitating resilience and sustainability for village/ town development.
The grassroots level stakeholders, viz. gram panchayat (village institutions) members, social leaders, social workers, officials in the Panchayat Raj system, NGOs and CBOs, were made aware of the enormous potential of the wealth of information created by the geospatial technology providers and imparted the training on the use of the portals developed by ISRO.
‘DigitalMaps@Work in Villages’ showcased the capabilities of Geospatial technologies to grassroots-level stakeholders and addressed their major challenges.
It reiterated the commitment of the geospatial industry to become a more ‘socially relevant’ and demand-driven service industry to address demands emerging from stakeholders at the grassroots level.
These interventions aim to steer the geospatial and space industry to align with the stakeholders’ needs in sustainable rural development.
With the indigenous development of Radar Imaging Satellites – RISAT-1 and 2 – as well as the upcoming Indo-US joint venture of NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR), Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has become very popular in the Indian scientific community, as a powerful remote sensing technology to observe and understand the Earth’s surface.
The recent advancements in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technology have significantly enhanced its capabilities and expanded its applications. Advances in technology have led to the development of systems capable of capturing images with unprecedented detail.
High-resolution SAR images can now be used for various applications, including urban planning, infrastructure monitoring, and environmental assessment.
Advancements in SAR technology have led to the development of compact and lightweight systems that can be deployed on small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or satellites.
The technology is being increasingly integrated with other remote sensing technologies, such as optical and thermal imaging, to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the Earth’s surface.
This integration allows for the generation of multi-sensor data products that can be used for a wide range of applications. As technology continues to evolve, we can expect further enhancements in SAR capabilities, further expanding its potential applications and impact.
Charting the Way
The debut SAR mission was commenced by NASA in 1973 after launching SEASAT, along with a few other payloads. Thereafter, many airborne and space-borne SAR missions have been launched by various space agencies. One of the major game changers in the applications has been the open-access data products of Sentinel-1.
ISRO at Space Applications Centre developed its first SAR Radar Imaging satellite (RISAT-1) which was launched in 2012. As a follow-on mission to RISAT-1, RISAT-1A, also known as Earth Observation Satellite (EOS-04) launched in 2022, has an indigenously developed, C-band, active array SAR with several features and improvements over its predecessor to meet the user requirements.
With the new geospatial policy announced by Govt of India, Indian Remote Sensing Satellite data of spatial resolution 5m and above has also been made available openly without any cost by the National Remote Sensing Centre, ISRO through its Bhoonidhi portal.
Render of Radar Imaging Satellite RISAT-1 in deployed configuration
Aiding Agriculture
Ministry of Agriculture requires multiple pre-harvest acreage and production estimates of major kharif and rabi crops at various spatial scales, which has been done since the late 80s using remote sensing and ancillary data.
SAR technology has emerged as a powerful tool in agriculture, offering unique capabilities for monitoring crops and improving agricultural practices.
SAR, with its ability to penetrate clouds and operate day and night, provides valuable information that complements traditional optical remote sensing techniques. The reflection (backscatter in SAR) is highly sensitive to the moisture content as well as surface and canopy structure due to changes in dielectric constant and roughness.
One of the key applications of SAR in agriculture is crop monitoring and management. SAR can provide detailed information about crop growth, health, and stress levels. By analyzing that data, farmers can make informed decisions about irrigation, fertilization, and pest control, leading to improved crop yields and resource efficiency.
Another important application of SAR in agriculture is crop mapping and classification. Its data can be used to identify different crop types and monitor their spatial distribution. This information is invaluable for crop inventory, land use planning, and crop yield forecasting. The technology can also be used to monitor land degradation, such as soil erosion and desertification.
By analyzing this data over time, scientists and policymakers can assess the extent of land degradation and implement measures to mitigate its effects.
One of the major game changers in the applications has been the open-access data products of Sentinel-1. As SAR technology continues to evolve, its applications in agriculture are expected to grow, providing farmers with the tools they need to improve crop yields, reduce resource consumption, and adapt to a changing climate.
Forests and Climate
Forests play a very significant role in the global climate. Regular monitoring of forest areas and Above Ground Biomass is useful to manage forest degradation as well as in tracking total carbon storage.
SAR is revolutionizing forestry management by offering a wealth of information that is invaluable for monitoring forests, estimating biomass, detecting deforestation and illegal logging, monitoring forest fires, and assessing forest health.
Its data can provide detailed information about the extent and distribution of forests, allowing forestry agencies to monitor deforestation, degradation, and land use changes over time.
This information is crucial for sustainable forest management and conservation efforts. The technology is also used for estimating forest biomass, which is essential for assessing carbon stocks and monitoring forest health. It can also be used to detect deforestation and illegal logging activities in forests.
When it comes to managing wildlife disasters, SAR is instrumental in detecting and monitoring forest fires, allowing for the detection of heat sources associated with wildfires. This information is crucial for early detection and rapid response to forest fires, helping to minimize their impact on forest ecosystems and nearby communities.
By monitoring these changes over time, one can assess the health of forests and implement measures to mitigate the impact of forest pests and diseases.
Monitoring Earth’s Ice
The cryosphere, comprising of ice and snow, plays a crucial role in Earth’s climate system, affecting global sea levels, weather patterns, and ocean currents. Monitoring the cryosphere is essential for understanding and predicting climate change impacts.
SAR offers unique capabilities for studying ice and snow dynamics with unprecedented detail. The Himalayas, home to some of the world’s highest peaks and most extensive glaciers are a region of immense geological and ecological significance.
Monitoring this region is crucial for understanding climate change impacts, water resource management, and natural hazard mitigation. Glacier mass balance, used as a climate change indicator, requires regular monitoring.
However, due to the tough terrain, quality data collection through ground truth is limited, hence optical as well as SAR-based remote sensing is one of the best options for regular and long-term data collection for the analysis.
SAR has emerged as a vital tool for studying the Himalayas, offering unique capabilities for monitoring its glaciers, landforms, and environmental changes. The technology can provide detailed information about glacier flow rates, ice thickness changes, and glacier terminus positions.
This information is crucial for understanding glacier dynamics and predicting their response to climate change. The Himalayas are also prone to landslides and avalanches, which pose significant risks to human settlements and infrastructure.
It can detect and monitor landslides and avalanches in near real-time, providing early warning systems and valuable information for disaster management and risk assessment.
Disaster Management
SAR plays a crucial role in disaster management, providing valuable information for monitoring, assessing, and responding to various types of disasters worldwide like floods, earthquakes, subsidence, landslides, volcanic activity, oil spills, and cyclones.
Floods are one of the most frequent and vulnerable natural phenomena that occur due to both natural and anthropogenic changes.
Space-borne SAR can provide synoptic coverage and the capability to monitor flood-affected regions repeatedly, their progressions/recessions as well as damage assessment, making it an indispensable tool for the management and mitigation of such disasters.
During the floods, the technology provides detailed information about the extent of flooding, allowing authorities to assess the affected areas and plan evacuation and relief efforts accordingly. Its data is also used to monitor flood dynamics in real time, providing crucial information for flood forecasting and early warning systems.
Disasters like earthquakes are difficult to predict, however, SAR data is extremely useful in monitoring the seismic activities in the earthquake-prone zones by regular observations over those areas and computing the minute deformation through interferometric techniques. SAR technology is also used for earthquake damage assessment by comparing satellite images before and after an earthquake.
Oil Supervision
Oil spill is one of the major threats to the marine environment and the timely detection, monitoring, and mitigation of the threats using the easily scalable system, is one of the most important tasks for the ocean community.
With the increase in largescale developmental activities in the offshore and coastal regions, the chances of oil spills are also becoming very frequent.
Even though they originated in the deeper regions, they spread rapidly with the wind, waves, and currents. The development of sensors as well as techniques in recent times has increased the feasibility of detecting oil spills in real-time and computing their area as well as the direction of spread.
Due to its all-weather and day-night observation capability, SAR has become one of the extremely suitable instruments for oil spill detection tasks.
Oceanic Challenges
Ocean and coastal monitoring are of great scientific interest as well as economic interest. SAR applications for the ocean range from the ocean surface and internal waves, oil spills, currents, high-resolution surface winds, ships and pollutants detection, oil spill detection, underwater topography, coastline and inter-tidal zone classification, etc.
Many coastal and deep ocean activities such as coastal and offshore structure design, ship navigation, and the dissipation of marine pollution have substantial dependencies on ocean waves and wind information. SAR data can be used for all these problems.
Characteristics of the ocean surface and internal waves from SAR data are estimated using spectral analysis with various corrections during the estimation because of the modulation in the SAR image due to the ocean motion as well as imaging phenomena.
Similar to internal waves, other ocean phenomena revealed by SAR include the detection of ocean surface current patterns, eddies, and gyres, by their influence on surface waves.
Monitoring of underwater topography in coastal regions is vital for the exploration and exploitation of non-living and living resources such as operations on engineering structures, ship navigation, dredging, fishing, and laying pipelines/cables.
In addition to these activities, bathymetry plays a vital role in simulating storm surges, ocean currents, and waves in numerical models. The conventional techniques using ships and buoys over the vast stretches of coastal waters though provide data at higher spatial resolution and high accuracy, are found to be expensive and inadequate in terms of coverage.
NISAR’s Outreach
A dual-frequency NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) is also planned to be in orbit in the very near future. NISAR, a dual-frequency (L and S band) SAR with an innovative SweepSAR technology with a high repeat cycle of 12 days, will be providing high resolution (2-30 m resolution) with a wide swath (>240 km) with the capability of acquiring full-polarimetric and repeat-pass interferometry.
NISAR has been conceptualized to provide a detailed view of the Earth to observe and measure some of the planet’s most complex processes, including ecosystem disturbances, glaciers, and ice-sheet dynamics, land deformations induced by tectonic and non-tectonic processes, coastal process dynamics and natural hazards.
This powerful and unique mission will produce a wealth of data over the global landmass, ice-covered regions, and oceans around India with enormous application potential.
The huge high-quality data of more than 40Tbits/day data will be transferred to ISRO and NASA ground stations for processing and will be provided to the research as well as user communities for science problems and numerous applications.
One of the major uniqueness of NISAR is the free and open data policy, in which all data will be provided freely to global users. From the Indian perspective, in addition to the science activities, NISAR data will be utilized for various SAR-based applications with free data for several operational project accomplishments.
For the initial as well as routine calibration, it has a comprehensive plan that involves setting up a network of corner reflectors, establishing corner reflectors around Indian research stations in Antarctica, and leveraging SAR calibration sites in the USA in addition to the homogeneously distributed targets.
Synthetic Aperture Radar is a versatile and powerful remote sensing technology with a wide range of applications. From environmental monitoring to disaster management, and urban planning to agriculture, SAR plays a crucial role in our understanding of the Earth’s surface and its changes over time. As SAR technology continues to advance, its applications are likely to expand, further enhancing its importance in modern remote sensing.
The first two Maxar WorldView Legion satellites are performing well after a successful launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on May 2 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.
Maxar Intelligence has confirmed that both spacecraft deployed their solar arrays and began sending and receiving signals. The process of commissioning the satellites will now begin to deliver 30 cm class, 8-band optical imagery to users.
European Space Imaging (EUSI) upgraded its multi-mission ground station located at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) near Munich last year to ensure successful uplink and downlink with the new WorldView Legion constellation. Increased Near Real-Time (NRT) capabilities and more secure data encryption were also among the EUSI ground station upgrades.
“Today marks a new era in Earth Observation capabilities for the European market,” says Adrian Zevenbergen, CEO of EUSI. “The demand for rapid intelligence from 30 cm optical imagery across the continent has never been greater and, through our ground station here in Munich, we are excited to provide this crucial dataset to key European programmes as well as regional governments and commercial applications alike.”
These two satellites, part of a total of six planned, are already poised to significantly alleviate the capacity demands for Very High Resolution (VHR) satellite imagery that Europe and North Africa have seen in recent years.
In a press release, representatives from Maxar Technologies, a long-time partner of EUSI, said:
“The successful launch of the first two WorldView Legion satellites represents a transformational moment for our business,” said Maxar Intelligence CEO Dan Smoot. “These first-of-a-kind satellites will extend the quality and capability of our industry-leading constellation, tripling our ability to collect 30 cm-class imagery with high revisit rates and at more varied times throughout the day—meaning faster, more actionable insights for our customers. Thank you to all team members across Maxar who have worked tirelessly on this program to get us to this moment.”
“We are proud to partner with Maxar Intelligence on the WorldView Legion program,” said Maxar Space Systems CEO Chris Johnson. “We are happy to report the first two satellites launched and are performing nominally, and we remain focused on preparing to launch the additional four satellites later this year.”
EUSI will now begin the process of readying its antenna to task the two new satellites and rapidly deliver the data to partners and customers across Europe and North Africa.
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