Here is a Drone that "flies" in a different space - Underwater!
Aerial drones have found a huge market, from aerial photography to land surveying, with even package deliveries in the works. But underwater drones are more rare.
Indeed, underwater photography or police work or other applications usually require human divers or equipment that can cost small (or large) fortunes.
Enter Fathom, a Grand Rapids-area startup firm that has developed a small underwater drone that can fulfill missions of many types. Potential customers include everyone from anglers searching for the best fishing sites to police searching underwater for evidence to oil companies inspecting their pipelines, and much more.
Fathom’s marketing slogan: "Embrace the deep."
The firm is run by three partners, all recent graduates of Hope College. One partner, Matthew Gira, said the idea for Fathom came up when another partner, Danny Vessells, then an engineering student at Hope College, was curious about what he might find in
Thumb Lake near his cottage in northern lower Michigan.
Fathom, a start-up firm, will launch the underwater drone this summer. Edgewater Development in St. Joseph will produce the molds and handle mass production. ANDRAYA CROFT/SPECIAL TO THE DETROIT FREE PRESS
"He realized that he couldn’t see under the water," Gira said. "There’s all these myths and legends about what’s actually down in the lake but no one one actually knows. And it’s a really deep lake. You can’t just go down there and swim and see."
Vessells contacted Gira and other students at Hope College, and together they came up with the idea of an underwater drone. A year or so later, Fathom has emerged with a prototype underwater robot controlled from an ordinary mobile device.
Potential customers include everyone from anglers searching for the best fishing sites to police searching underwater for evidence to oil companies inspecting their pipelines, and much more.
"There’s a lot of different applications," he said. "Everything is controlled from ! your phone or tablet."
The fledgling company has gained $28,000 so far from various pitch competitions and entrepreneurial support groups. Coming up at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Mackinac Policy Conference, Fathom will go head-to-head against a Detroit- based start-up, Detroit Ento, in a pitch competition to be judged by Daymond John, wealthy entrepreneur and a star on the television show "Shark Tank."
The winner in the pitch competition will receive cash and other entrepreneurial services.
The pitch competition is just the latest in Michigan’s growing ecosystem of entrepreneurial start-up services, from business incubators like Ann Arbor SPARK and Tech Town in Detroit to a growing network of venture capital investors.
Excerpts for this article from the Detroit Free Press, May 31, 2016
For more information, contact John Gallagher: 313-222-5173313-222-5173 or gallagher@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @jgallagherfreep
