BELLEVUE, Wash. – Radar and aircraft go together like hand and glove, but what do you do when the aircraft is a commercial drone that weighs less than a fully loaded suitcase? Bellevue-based Echodyne is taking the wraps off a radar system that’s just a step up from smartphone size but provides advanced capabilities for drones and autonomous vehicles.
Echodyne’s technology is known as Metamaterials Electronically Scanning Array, or MESA. It takes advantage of beam-directing metamaterials to perform radar scanning without moving parts, and without the complicated electronics that phased-array systems require. The system’s small size and big capability hit the sweet spot for small unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, which could soon be used for package deliveries.
“No radar has existed that anyone could think of to put on a small UAV,” Eben Frankenberg, Echodyne’s founder and CEO, told GeekWire. “That’s where we’re super-excited to come into play.”
