According to reports, Massachusetts-based Aria Insights, which in January changed its name from CyPhy Works, has shut down.
The tethered drone company was aiming to use the rebranding to focus on integrating artificial intelligence and machine language into its drones.
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CEO Vanden Brook talked about the rebranding and why it wanted to focus more on providing data analytics. “After 10 years of innovating and redefining drone technology, the team at CyPhy saw the limitations facing the industry – namely the complications and risks of retrieving and analyzing data,” he said.
“A number of our partners were collecting and housing massive amounts of information with our drones, but there was no service in the industry to quickly and efficiently turn that data into actionable insights.”
The company was founded in 2008 under the name The Droid Works, with robotics pioneer Helen Greiner, he co-founder of iRobot, as one of its founders. The company’s tethered aerial vehicles were used in the agriculture, defense, law enforcement, and energy industries.
The closure of Aria/CyPhy is another in a line of recent robotics and aerial drone-related companies in recent months. Cobot pioneer Rethink Robotics shut its doors in October 2018, drone company Airware closed in September 2018, and consumer robot companies Mayfield Robotics and Jibo also ceased operations last year.