Meet ResilienX, a 2019 Finalist

"We want to be the check engine light for the commercial drone industry to enable beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) drone operations."​

A Q/A with Co-founders Andrew Carter and Ryan Pleskach of ResilienX​.

Company HQ: Syracuse, NY 
Team Size: 4
Focus: Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) Software
Website: www.resilienx.com

How would you describe your team?
First and foremost, we’re the “home town team,” and we’re proud to say we were founded at The Tech Garden, and we’re growing in Syracuse. Our team is passionate and driven to bring high-tech jobs to Central New York. We hire smart people that get things done, and we’re going to keep doing that.

Tell me a little bit more about ResilienX.
We want to be the check engine light for the drone industry. We’re helping enable beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) drone operations. There’s a lot of factors to that, but we’re trying to increase the safety and up-time, and reduce the maintenance costs of the unmanned aerial systems (UAS) traffic management (UTM) ecosystem that is required for BVLOS.

Right now, with the FAA, if you want to fly beyond-visual-line-of-sight, you have to apply for a waiver to the FAA, and they’re currently rejecting more than 99% of all those applications. Most of them get rejected because the applicant can’t prove their safety case. They can’t prove that they can fly and not hurt somebody on the ground or interfere with other aircraft. Our software will automate fault detection, fault tolerance, fault isolation, & contingence management to increase system robustness and accelerate waiver acceptance. ​

Can you expand a little bit more on what problem you're solving?
So the problem that we’re solving is that the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) current model for air traffic management doesn’t scale to the deal with the expected drone demand. Current UTM research doesn’t really account for what happens when something fails or goes wrong; there is no air traffic controller for drones. For instance, if there is a failure or fault detected, and then what to do about it. If there’s one drone in the air and something goes wrong, well, you probably land the drone. If there are 10,000 drones in the air, you can’t rack and stack drones for an hour while you fix the problem; their batteries would die. So, a UTM really has to be able to account for those issues, do it in real time, do it so the system stays up while a fix is occurring, so that the operations occurring don’t all have to return to home immediately.​

Who are your customers?
We’re currently partnering with FAA approved UAS Test Sites, as well as other players in the UTM industry who are trying to build a UTM system from the ground up. ​

What phase is your company at right now? 
We’ve started development. The concept and the value proposition have been validated around the industry. And now we’re building the actual product and working with numerous partners to continue to refine our roadmap. 

Why are you excited about GENIUS NY?
We’re excited about the opportunities, and the opportunity in the large sense. The opportunities to learn, the opportunities to network, and the opportunity to show-off our home city to the rest of the GENIUS NY teams.

The ability to harness the diverse expertise and resources from The Tech Garden is incredible. Obviously, the funding’s exciting because it helps get our product developed, but everything we’re learning and the ability to work with all the mentors is going to take us to the next level.

What would you do with the one million grand prize? 
Our industry is all about traction; the grand prize will allow us to expand to more FAA Test Sites and Pilot Programs, and potentially internationally. There’s a lot of exciting things happening in Europe and Asia that we would love to work on. The grand prize would help us finish our product quicker and allow us to replicate our solution in more locations faster.  

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To learn more about ResilienX visit www.resilienx.com. Watch them pitch for the $1 Million grand prize on April 9 at the Marriott Syracuse Downtown. Get your tickets here.