A lot is happening in the drone space right now, with one of the big stories being the emergence of open-source for drones. Auterion has found itself an interesting niche in the industry, developing a drone operating system and analytics platform based on open-source R&D that is rapidly gaining traction. Think iOS vs. Android (Auterion). Auterion enables drone manufacturers to focus on their hardware, so they no don't have to worry about developing and continually updating the software layer that controls the aircraft and captures and manages the data. This reduces R&D costs and enables companies to focus on innovating new applications and payloads and focusing on key differentiators.

Auterion is building an ecosystem of hardware platforms unified around a single software system, with a consortium of companies mounting a credible challenge against market leader DJI, chipping away at their market dominance. GE Aviation, Freefly, Avy, Impossible Aerospace, Quantum-Systems, and several other companies already use Auterion, with more in the works. At the heart of Auterion is PX4, the most used flight control software (in terms of units) in non-DJI drones. The project was started by Lorenz over 10 years ago and today counts more than 8000 users (individuals and companies) and 600+ contributors. Because the project is open source (and is permissively licensed) it has gained broad adoption worldwide and is today comparable to "the Linux" for drones. Hundreds of companies build components, products, and solutions that are compatible with these open standards.

Lorenz Meier Co-Founder of Auterion joins me on the Tech Talks Daily Podcast to share the story behind the software platform designed to make large-scale drone operations simple, safe, and fully integrated in workflows.