Agilica has officially transitioned from a research project into a commercial entity following its spin-out from the Royal Military Academy (RMA) in Belgium.
The company emerged from a proof-of-concept project known as iPoint, which was funded by Innoviris to enable Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to automate takeoff and landing in GPS-denied environments. As part of its departure, the startup has installed a fully functional AGL system within the RMA’s new drone cage. This setup integrates patented Ultra-Wideband (UWB) high-precision positioning anchors alongside a vision tracking system to support ongoing academic research in robotics and drone applications.
The AGL technology was developed to solve the challenges of navigating indoors, in GPS-shaded areas, or on moving platforms. Beyond landing and takeoff, the system is capable of tracking multiple tagged assets and humans simultaneously within a shared space. It also provides digital heading data and serves as a redundancy for magnetic compasses and visual-based positioning systems.
Hafeez Chaudhary, CEO Agilica, commented, “We are extremely grateful to RMA for all the support we received and look forward to continuing working with them. This is our way of giving back to the academy that incubated us.”
Geert De Cubber, Head of Robotics & Autonomous Systems Research Unit at RMA, noted, “We are incredibly happy to receive this AGL system from Agilica. It will boost our R&D work and provide great opportunities for our researchers and our students.”
The founding team is composed of specialists who steered the technology through its academic phase. Hafeez Chaudhary, the original researcher-entrepreneur, serves as CEO and CTO. He is joined by COO Bart Scheers, a former professor at RMA who acted as the project promoter, and CCO Boden Dollie, who previously served as the project’s strategy consultant.
As a DeepTech company, Agilica focuses on applying research in UWB and sensor systems to increase the reliability of autonomous drone operations. The company’s technology is designed to enable high-throughput operations in dynamic environments where traditional satellite navigation is unavailable or unreliable.
