Trimble Applanix played a pivotal role in helping U.S. robotics company Target Arm achieve reliable, autonomous drone recovery from moving vehicles. Find out more > >
As drone applications, from package delivery to infrastructure inspection, expand across North America, precise positioning has become critical. Target Arm’s AI-enhanced Ralar® system, designed to launch and recover drones from cars, trucks, trains, and boats, struggled with heading and positional drift caused by traditional compass and GNSS limitations. Environmental interference and erratic satellite signals made accurate, on-the-move recovery virtually impossible.
The solution came through Trimble’s high-precision GNSS-inertial technology. Target Arm equipped the Ralar system with the Applanix LVX-125 dual-antenna GNSS-inertial system, providing robust, real-time heading and position unaffected by local interference. Drones were fitted with the Trimble PX-1 RTX system, delivering stable, highly accurate positional data aligned with the Ralar system. Both systems leveraged Trimble CenterPoint® RTX corrections, ensuring globally consistent, base-station-free accuracy for seamless drone navigation and recovery.
The result: Target Arm’s Ralar system could confidently track its own position while drones autonomously returned and held precise patterns near moving targets. Trimble’s technology transformed a complex, error-prone process into a reliable, high-precision operation, turning futuristic drone autonomy into a tangible, real-world capability.
