This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: the Podcast” is with Rob Thelen, CEO and co-founder of Rownd.
The autonomous drone technology company is headquartered in North Carolina and has flight-test operations in Richfield, where it’s opening a new R&D center later this month. Rownd last week announced the launch of its AI drone systems, as well as a $10 million contract it has secured with the U.S. Department of Defense.
“A warfighter might need to understand something that’s downrange, and they can put one of our systems in the air and it will autonomously go find what’s over there and report back without any user inputs,” Thelen said.
Since launching in 2022, Rownd now has active contracts with U.S. Special Forces and the Air Force and is working with the U.S. Navy on a “large exercise” and related opportunities.
Thelen, who grew up in Oconomowoc, discusses his background with IBM and the military, as well as the company’s roots in the West Coast startup accelerator Y Combinator. After starting with authentication services to healthcare organizations and government entities, the company pivoted toward “edge AI” applications and set its sights on drone applications.
Rownd’s smallest “quadcopter” drone with four motors can fit inside of a backpack, while its larger fixed-wing machines are seven feet across.
“The drones themselves are being built right here in Wisconsin,” Thelen said.
He explains the company’s approach to drone innovation, noting its machines differ from those that need to be manually controlled at all times.
“You may have seen people with the cool goggles on them, or they might be looking down at a screen with joysticks, kind of playing a video game. We’ve gotten rid of all of that,” Thelen said. “We don’t believe that the future of warfare is people playing video games.”
Instead, the operator communicates to the machines what to do and “the drones themselves have the intelligence onboard to go run that mission,” Thelen said.
The conversation also explores ethical considerations for autonomous weapon systems, as well as how AI has transformed the modern battlefield by enabling cheaper autonomous drone fleets and faster combat evolution.
“It is both terrifying in the sense that AI is making it so any organization on the planet … can create killer drones, but it’s also exciting because with the right purposes, we can really protect American soldiers and get them off the battlefield altogether in the future, which is my goal overall,” Thelen said.
Listen to the podcast below, sponsored by UW-Madison:
