Maxar Intelligence has announced a significant agreement with Taiwan's Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation (AIDC), one of the largest aerospace and defense contractors in Taiwan. This partnership centers around the deployment of Maxar's Raptor drone navigation software across Taiwan's burgeoning unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) industry.
The AIDC will integrate Maxar Raptor, a vision-based software suite, into its UAV systems. Raptor enables autonomous drones to navigate and extract accurate ground coordinates even in the absence of GPS or other satellite navigation systems. It achieves this by leveraging high-resolution 3D terrain models generated from Maxar's satellite imagery. The drone compares its real-time camera feed with the pre-existing 3D model to determine its position and orientation, eliminating reliance on vulnerable satellite signals.
Maxar highlights Raptor's ability to operate effectively at night and at low altitudes without requiring any extra hardware. This capability is particularly crucial in the face of increasingly sophisticated GPS jamming and spoofing technologies that can render conventional satellite navigation unreliable or unusable, especially during combat operations. A successful field test in Taiwan earlier this year demonstrated Raptor's precise navigation under GPS-denied conditions using only the drone's camera and the software.
“Taiwan is rapidly building one of the most advanced UAV industries in the world,” stated Anders Linder, general manager of international government at Maxar Intelligence. AIDC, a major player in both military and civilian UAV markets in Taiwan, is ideally positioned to distribute Raptor widely.
AIDC will spearhead the adoption of Raptor among Taiwanese UAV suppliers. The company will also promote its use within the Taiwan Excellence Drone International Business Opportunity Alliance, a consortium AIDC chairs. This alliance comprises Taiwanese drone manufacturers, component suppliers, and technology developers, focusing on coordinated export strategies and technology sharing. “We will jointly build a Taiwan-focused integration and testing center, highlight GPS-jamming resilience as a core differentiator, and unlock opportunities across Taiwan and the broader Asia market,” commented AIDC President Chin-Ping Tsao.
Maxar Intelligence, based in Westminster, Colorado, utilizes a network of high-resolution imaging satellites to provide the data underlying its terrain-mapping capabilities. This partnership with AIDC represents a strategic expansion of Maxar’s defense technology offerings beyond its established satellite imagery services.