Owning the denied sky

Vision-based positioning for drones that reads the terrain when GNSS goes dark.

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Trusted in the field

INRIA Startup Studio

Incubation

Army observers

Flight trials

Flown on military ground in front of army observers. In active work with French defence stakeholders and industrial groups.

Mission

48.8566° N · 2.3522° E

When GNSS goes dark, flight must continue

Satellite positioning is the first thing to fail: jammed, spoofed, or simply gone. Every drone that depends on it fails with it.

KALGARD builds vision-based onboard positioning that reads the terrain beneath the aircraft and keeps a trusted position through the whole flight. No GNSS, no datalink.

A sovereign European system: engineered in France, free of foreign compute dependencies, running on open maps the operator owns.

Technology

GNSS-independent

MerlinSight

One onboard module, three capabilities. It sits on the aircraft, watches the terrain, and answers the questions GNSS no longer can.

Passive, no emission
Platform-agnostic
266 g

MS-1Astrel

Positioning

Where am I?

Continuous onboard position with periodic absolute correction: the downward camera view is matched against georeferenced terrain. GPS-like output to the flight controller, no autopilot modification.

MS-2Arrow

Targeting

Where is it?

Georeferenced designation of ground objectives directly from the aircraft’s view, without GNSS on the target or the platform.

MS-3Sillage

Mapping

What does the terrain look like now?

Georeferenced imagery and terrain products built in flight, independent of satellite positioning.

MerlinSight prototype, camera and compute — Prototype · optics & compute

Flight trials · module on the airframe

Preparing a flight on a laptop in the field — Mission setup · in the field

Flight trial site with the drone and ground equipment on folding tables — Flight trials · on site

Presenting the MerlinSight prototype to a soldier in the field — Field demonstration · army regiment

Flight integration work in the KALGARD workshop — Flight integration · workshop

Field results

Flight-proven

Proven in the air, in the conditions that matter. What follows is a glimpse. The rest stays between us and our partners.

Forest and tracks · gusts

Accuracy

Under 3 m

Median position error in cruise, computed live on board. Best flight to date: 1.8 m.

Speed

70 km/h

Top speed flown, over mountain relief.

Height

10 to 200 m

Holds its position from under 10 m above the ground to over 200 m.

Agility

1.4 g · 40°

Hard manoeuvres: up to 1.4 g, 40° of tilt and turns at 160° per second.

Weather

Fog, gusts, low cloud

Flown when the ground is barely visible and the air is rough.

Into the fog

Mountain relief · strong wind

Roads and forest

Continuity

Land, take off again

Position held through landing and re-take-off, without starting over.

Measured in real flight against the aircraft’s own GPS. Flight by flight detail, trajectories and raw data are shared privately with qualified partners.

Request the flight data

Team

Jules Baldantoni

Founder · Aeronautical Engineer

Imperial College London

UAV systems and product. Bringing MerlinSight into operational flight.

Thibault Noël

Robotics Engineer · PhD

ISAE-SUPAERO

Autonomous navigation, onboard perception, resilient localization.

Massimo Marcellin

Product · Field

French special forces · 9 years

Field trials and end users. Then engineering and AI in aerospace: operational experience behind every product choice.