Red Cat Holdings is collaborating with Safe Pro Group Inc. to embed Safe Pro’s patented Object Threat Detection (SPOTD) system, an AI-powered image analysis technology, into Red Cat’s Black Widow drones, supporting defense and national security applications.
By integrating this AI system, the Black Widow drone will be able to process real-time 4K video onboard and provide live threat data to military situational awareness platforms, including the U.S. Army’s Tactical Assault Kit (ATAK) software ecosystem. This capability, delivered at the tactical edge, enhances battlefield awareness and speeds up mission-critical decision-making.
SPOTD will enable U.S. and allied ground personnel to quickly identify and locate over 150 types of explosive threats in real-time, such as landmines, anti-personnel mines, cluster munitions, and unexploded ordnance (UXO).
Red Cat will also integrate Safe Pro’s new SPOTD Navigation, Observation and Detection Engine (NODE) into its multirotor UAS. This is a powerful, edge-based solution developed to process, map and share mission-critical information collected by drones.
The SPOTD NODE “kit”, designed for rapid deployment at the edge, allows end users to capture real-time visual data, receive threat alerts, and transform that imagery into interactive 2D and 3D maps marking hazard locations. This delivers enhanced situational awareness, supporting many different ground missions in connectivity-denied environments.
Safe Pro’s SPOTD technology is powered by one of the world’s largest real-world landmine and UXO datasets, built from high-resolution imagery and GPS-tagged geospatial data. To date, the dataset includes more than 1.88 million analyzed drone images and has identified over 34,200 threats across 8,119 hectares (20,062 acres) in Ukraine.
Jeff Thompson, Red Cat CEO, stated, “The Black Widow continues to distinguish itself as a leading sUAS platform for defense and security, ideally suited to supporting the evolving needs of the U.S. Army and its global allies. By incorporating field-proven innovations such as Safe Pro’s unique AI-powered threat detection technology, we continue to redefine the future of force protection and battlefield awareness.”
Dan Erdberg, Chairman and CEO of Safe Pro Group Inc., added, “As demonstrated in Ukraine, the battlefield is dramatically evolving, establishing a critical need to provide today’s warfighter with access to enhanced, real-time situational awareness.
“By harnessing the power of the Black Widow with Safe Pro’s battle-tested threat detection technology, we have created a platform that can uniquely support the needs of the U.S. Army for real-time battlefield intelligence, and we look forward to bringing this capability to our warfighters.”
