Drones on the prowl

The army of the future. Stop for a moment and think about a team of robots entering a building, scanning rooms, pursuing suspects, and protecting lives, all without direct human intervention. It already exists. Xtend is an Israeli company that started in the world of video games and has just raised more than $30 million to expand its army of intelligent machines that operate in defense, security, and emergency situations.

The company's new generation of robots not only thinks, but also learns, performs dangerous tasks on its own, and allows a single human operator to command entire missions. The line between humans and machines is becoming increasingly blurred and perhaps more strategic than ever.

At the heart of this revolution is ExOS, a supervised autonomy operating system developed by Xtend. It allows robots such as drones, dogs, robots, and marine vehicles to act with partial autonomy in highly dangerous environments, without the need for a human to be in control at all times.

The integrated AI is capable of patrolling internal areas, identifying threats, making tactical decisions and even coordinating actions with other robots, all while the human supervisor only accompanies and intervenes when necessary. This hybrid architecture is a watershed, soldiers, civil engineers, firefighters and police officers no longer need to master robotics to operate these machines.

Quick and easy to use. With just 5 minutes of training they can already command complex missions, according to Xtend, their proposal is not to replace human judgment, but to protect it. The system delegates repetitive, strenuous and dangerous tasks to machines, maintaining common sense with operators, for example, in an urban combat scenario, robots can enter first, map areas, detect suspicious movements and even track targets, all this happens while humans supervise and make critical safety decisions.

Extend has already deployed thousands of units for the United States Department of Defense, the armed forces of Israel, the United Kingdom, Europe and Asian countries such as Singapore, and now with its new drone factory headquarters in Florida, the company is making strong progress in the United States, integrating its solutions directly into the country's military and disaster response ecosystem.

The support of strategic investors such as Elia Capital and Protego Go Ventures shows that the war of the future is being shaped today with software, sensors and intelligent robots ready to act anywhere on the planet, and most impressively, the system learns with each mission.

The more robots perform, the smarter and more efficient they become thanks to the continuous machine learning built into ExOS. And you there, tell me I'm not crazy, it's just me who sees a pattern occurring when machines decide where to enter, what to scan and who to chase, we are talking about a new type of power granted to AI systems, and the future is being written now and it may be looking directly at you through the sensors of a robot or your Smartphone there.