By Damien Golbin and Niall Macken

For its first event of the year, the Santa Cruz Hardware Group had organized a tour at Camp Six Labs, a Santa Cruz-based startup developing a breakthrough approach to cargo pickup and delivery leveraging autonomous cargo drones, which allows them to do it in an almost absolutely silent way.

Their trick? Using a fixed-wing electric plane which circles above the pickup target at 600ft. To go fish the payload, they winch down a hook which becomes static as it’s approaching the ground. Then an operator simply attaches it to the payload and the plane lifts it and flies away.

The entire flight is autonomous and doesn’t require any human intervention except for attaching/detaching the payload.

If Camp Six Labs’ first application is going to be deliveries in remote areas, their technology would allow them to operate in much denser regions where typical noisy VTOL machines would be much more disturbing for the inhabitants. Added to this, a pickup area no larger than a helipad is sufficient for them to operate. So basically, a small parking lot would be enough. 

Their team moved recently to a very large facility in Live Oak, where they design and fabricate their electric planes. For the organizers of the Santa Cruz Hardware Group, it was a perfect opportunity to organize a tour of the Camp Six Labs headquarters.

Clement Gires, their CEO, did a captivating presentation of the company’s 4-year journey and the multiple pivots they have been through. Starting from executing maintenance of wind turbine blades with a crawling autonomous quadcopter robot, they decided to pivot and experimented with cargo lifting using electrically powered kitesurfing wings. They then pivoted again to develop an autonomous paramotor to end up using their current electrical fixed-wing planes.

Another fascinating aspect is how they can fabricate a machine in a matter of days with very limited budget using laser cut plywood and carbon fiber woven around the fuselage, achieving an extremely light and stiff structure which seems more like a conceptual artistic sculpture before being covered with its heat shrinkable skin.

Running super lean operations and driven with an amazing agile development process, they have been able to iterate very quickly, test a lot of configurations, crash a few planes, and finally get to a robust proof of concept. 

Six Camp Labs is an inspiring example of how a startup can develop an extremely complex machine, staying focused on the key elements that allow progress toward the next milestone (which probably explains why they don’t spend time on any communication) and therefore using limited resources (except for the brain power of a passionate team!) They can count on the experience of Clement Gires, for whom it is not the first rodeo, having successfully exited his previous startup, Local Motion (acquired by Zipcar).

Damien Golbin and Niall Macken are the founders of the Santa Cruz Hardware Group which aims to gather and connect the amazing Product Development community in the Santa Cruz area. You can find the group on Linkedin: http://bit.ly/SC_HG or reach out to them by visiting their company website: www.spannerpd.com. They can also be found during the week for their traditional coffee break at Cats & Clouds downtown Santa Cruz or surfing at Pleasure Point or Steamer Lane during the weekend.