Santa Monica Firm Releases Drone Software to the Public

By City News Service

Santa Monica-based DreamHammer announced Wednesday the commercial availability of its software aimed at getting non-military drones off the ground.

"Ballista is commercial, off-the-shelf software designed to the highest military and safety critical standards but goes beyond military applications to work with all unmanned drones and robots,'' DreamHammer chief executive Nelson Paez said. "When applied to different industries -- for example, transportation, logistics, agriculture, law enforcement, etc. Ballista can be used to link multiple drones into one master system, all controlled by one person.''

Not all drones fly.

"A drone could be as simple as a farm tractor or as complicated as an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle or a satellite,'' Paez said. "It can be anything with a computer interface that is leveraging intelligence, technology and diversified control.''

DreamHammer has been licensing the software and providing support to the U.S. military and intelligence customers since August 2011. Paez said the key to the future of robotics is getting them to work together.

"Until now, there has been no way to tie them together,'' he said.