Ukrainian DefTech company Dwarf Engineering announced the launch of a B2B platform for integration between developers of autonomous control systems and manufacturers of UAVs, NRCs, ammunition, and surface/underwater drones.
Ukrainian DefTech company Dwarf Engineering announced the launch of a B2B platform for integration between developers of autonomous control systems and manufacturers of UAVs, NRCs, ammunition, and surface/underwater drones.
As Dwarf Engineering told dev.ua, the platform allows companies to focus on their core competency — software development or drone manufacturing — instead of building the infrastructure needed for collaboration. For businesses, the platform should eliminate the support, scaling, security, and update issues that arise during integration.
In this aspect, Dwarf Engineering CEO Vladislav Piotrovsky draws an analogy between the current market situation and the first generation of gaming systems.
«Miltek is at the stage of developing game consoles. To release Pac-Man, you have to release a console, you can’t just write code. In the second generation of consoles, when the mainframe appears — a computer with a processor — everyone can write games on cartridges. This was a huge milestone, because now game manufacturers didn’t have to make consoles,» he compares.
The analogy is continued by Oleksandr Bakhmach, head of the Dwarf Engineering service center: «Manufacturers of robotic complexes have their own computer — a screen, speakers, joysticks, all the peripherals. But to launch the „game“ and play, they need us.»
As for the issue of system support and updates, according to Oleksandr Bakhmach, users are facing a number of problems.
«Now, if someone wants to update something or has a problem, they take the entire device, go to Nova Poshta, put it in a box, send it to the manufacturer of the guidance (or other technology), get in line, wait a couple of months. To update 10,000 devices, you have to cram all 10,000. Accordingly, the scale of production of drones with guidance is tied to the scale of the guidance manufacturer — it is impossible to scale,» he describes the problem.
According to him, thanks to the transfer to the «cloud», software manufacturers will have the opportunity to provide updates to both the operating system and software completely remotely.
Currently, as the platform developers explain, in the Ukrainian defense industry, factories and software manufacturers are forced to independently build infrastructure for their integration so that their products «work», but this duplication of efforts slows down the work and can cost one company more than $100,000 per year.
Dwarf Engineering notes that their team was the first among Ukrainian DefTechs to launch an operating system for B2B integrations in the format of a «boxed solution», which allows for quick, stable, and safe integration of «software» into any robotic systems — from drones to NRCs.
«For the defense industry, the platform is a unified tool for secure collaboration between manufacturers, which minimizes the ‘zoo of solutions’ in terms of integrations,» the company explains.
The platform was created as a response to the team’s own experience: for a year, Dwarf Engineering developed an autonomous control module for Narsil drones, and when it came time to deliver the finished technology to the front, they faced a host of technical challenges that they set out to solve.
«Over time, it became clear: the algorithm itself and the infrastructure for integration are a separate product that is lacking in the market,» they concluded.
Reportedly, two Ukrainian DefTech companies have already started using the platform.
dev.ua wrote that recently the Ukrainian engineering and product company Dwarf Engineering showed how its Narsil module for autonomous control of FPV drones works.
