What if You Could Tell a Drone to “Find the Red Truck?” Avianna Software on Natural Language Processing for Drones

Start-up’s mission software uses plain English commands to control drones

By DRONELIFE Feature Editor Jim Magill

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Imagine being able to program drone missions by communicating with your UAVs using simple commands in English, such as having a police surveillance drone being able to pick out a suspect’s vehicle from a crowed highway by telling it to “Find the red truck.”

Avianna, a recently launched software startup, offers a suite of products that utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to enable drones and other robots to understand human language and operate autonomously.

Vic Pelicano, founder and CEO of Avianna, said he started the company earlier this year to harness the power of AI to be able to create smarter drones. He said the first generation of drone software, which enabled the flying vehicles to evolve from recreational products to commercially useful tools, is not advanced enough to bring commercial UAV operations…