Autonomous aerial inspection & repair
Aviary Robotics builds autonomous drones with robotic arms — inspecting utility infrastructure and completing the repair on the same flight.
The grid is aging faster than we can climb it
For a century, keeping the grid running has meant sending a person to go look at it, pole by pole. That doesn't scale to a system this size, this old, or this short-staffed — and every mile a crew doesn't reach is a fault waiting to become an outage.
Sources: industry pole-count estimates, CEWD / Lineman Central workforce data, Aviary internal TAM analysis.
One flight, start to finish
Most drones on poles today just take pictures. Aviary is built to act on what it sees — closing inspection and repair into a single flight, so the same trip that finds the problem is the one that fixes it.
An autonomous flight plan covers the corridor while the onboard perception stack flags anomalies in real time — cracked cross-arms, failed insulators, vegetation encroachment.
Every finding is classified and confidence-scored against the pole's known hardware, so crews know exactly what they're looking at before anyone leaves the office.
A robotic arm completes routine fixes on the spot — clearing debris, swapping a fuse, mounting a sensor — closing the loop the same day it opened.
How it flies
Every flight pairs a stereo perception stack with a manipulation arm sized for the hardware already on your poles, so the same unit that spots a problem can be trusted to touch it. Autonomy runs onboard, not in the cloud — the drone doesn't wait on a connection to make a judgment call forty feet in the air.
We're engineering the program around the frameworks utilities already answer to — FAA Part 107 BVLOS, NERC CIP, and OSHA 1910.269 — from the first flight test, not bolted on afterward.
In the field
We're flying pilot programs with utility partners now, working pole by pole through the cases that matter most: routine defect detection, debris clearing, and sensor installs.
"We didn't want to build another camera on a drone. We wanted something that could actually put a hand on the problem."
— Moorissa Tjokro & Jim Reich, Co-founders, Aviary Robotics
Who's building this
Co-founder — Perception & AI
Previously built perception systems for Tesla Autopilot and GM Cruise, and modeled climate systems at NASA Goddard. Georgia Tech & Columbia.
Co-founder — Hardware & Business
Leads hardware development and business development, from utility partnerships through flight test.
Work with us
Utility, investor, or engineer — we'd like to hear from you. Leave your email and we'll follow up directly.
Get in touch
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Questions
Flights run on autonomous plans, with a licensed remote pilot in command, consistent with FAA Part 107. Within that flight plan, the drone handles detection, diagnosis, and simple manipulation tasks on its own.
No. Aviary handles the routine, high-frequency work — inspection, minor component swaps, sensor installs — so crews can spend their time on complex repairs and emergency response, where you need people most.
Today: clearing vegetation and debris, swapping a fuse, and mounting sensors like GridScope. More involved repairs still go to a crew — we're expanding the list as we validate each task in the field.
Most drones on poles today just take pictures and hand the findings back to a human. Aviary is built to act on what it sees, so inspection and repair happen in the same flight instead of two separate dispatches.
We're currently piloting in Northern California and expanding from there. If you'd like to be part of the next phase, reach out below.