A UAV descending toward an autonomous ground station in misty mountains
GROUND SYSTEMS / GROUNDNODE

Aircraft are only one part of autonomous aviation

Infrastructure for Autonomous UAV Operations

Future UAV fleets may require infrastructure capable of supporting them without continuous human interaction. GroundNode is an exploratory Vahnim concept focused on this problem.

A future mission cycle

  1. 01
    Return from a mission

    Aircraft completes its assigned task and heads home.

  2. 02
    Land automatically

    Precision autonomous landing at the node.

  3. 03
    Recharge

    Battery swap or charge without a human on site.

  4. 04
    Transfer data

    Mission data uploaded for review and analysis.

  5. 05
    Perform system checks

    Automated health checks before the next deployment.

  6. 06
    Receive another mission

    New mission parameters loaded automatically.

  7. 07
    Redeploy

    Back in the air — no human required at this step.

Grounded in real problems

Driven by real commercial UAV customer problems — not by what looks interesting.

Autonomy research