Wiki / Engineering Notes

Cal Poly SLO · EE capstone scouting

SLO-area robotics and drone companies for capstone project alignment

A short list of companies in or near San Luis Obispo whose public work overlaps robotics, drones, autonomy, sensing, embedded systems, controls, RF, power, or field deployment.

Use this as a targeting brief, not a claim of sponsorship. The project ideas are inferred from public product direction and should be framed to a faculty advisor or company contact as student-scale prototypes, test fixtures, or subsystem demonstrations.

Best capstone-fit themes

Autonomy that works outside the lab

Navigation, landing, obstacle handling, state estimation, health monitoring, and data logging for dusty, windy, GPS-limited, or low-connectivity environments.

Payload and sensor integration

Modular camera, thermal, RF, GNSS, soil, crop, or actuator payloads with clean power, timing, data interfaces, and calibration.

Counter-UAS / RF awareness

Detection, localization, spectrum monitoring, GNSS/C2-band characterization, benign test emitters, and operator dashboards. Keep anything jamming-related simulation-only unless supervised.

Robotics test infrastructure

Automated regression tests, hardware-in-the-loop rigs, telemetry replay, safety interlocks, battery endurance benches, and field-data quality tools.

Company targets

Inspired Flight Technologies

San Luis Obispo · American-made professional drone systems

sUASNDAAinspectionmappingpublic safety

Products / direction: Inspired Flight designs, assembles, and supports NDAA-compliant drone platforms for inspection, mapping, research, public safety, infrastructure protection, and other mission-critical field work. Public history highlights the IF750, and the current product family is aimed at secure, reliable professional UAS built and tested in the U.S.

Capstone ideas

Payload power-and-data sled: a modular payload interface board with regulated rails, current sensing, CAN/UART/Ethernet options, and hot-swap-safe logging for cameras or custom sensors.
Drone health monitor: vibration, motor-current, ESC-temperature, and battery telemetry fusion to flag maintenance issues before flight failure.
Precision landing target: AprilTag/IR beacon landing pad plus onboard or ground-side estimator for repeatable landing accuracy tests.
Secure field-log appliance: tamper-evident flight log capture, checksum signing, and quick post-flight export for regulated/public-safety customers.

Zone 5 Technologies

San Luis Obispo · advanced unmanned aircraft systems and defense autonomy

UASC-UASMOSAopen C2flight test

Products / direction: Zone 5 describes air-launched effects, the White Spike open interceptor platform, and Paladin, a TAK-integrated multi-mission UAS. Public positioning emphasizes digitally engineered, modular, affordable, flight-proven systems and counter-UAS applications.

Capstone ideas

Open-architecture telemetry gateway: translate MAVLink/CAN/serial sensor streams into a clean TAK-like or MQTT test feed for ground-station visualization.
Hardware-in-the-loop flight-control bench: low-cost HIL setup that injects IMU/GNSS/airspeed faults and records controller response for regression testing.
Cooperative UAS intercept simulator: simulation-only guidance, tracking, and engagement geometry dashboard for studying small-drone interception without building a weaponized system.
Rugged launch-container electronics demonstrator: environmental sensing, power sequencing, built-in-test, and go/no-go status display for deployable UAS equipment.

Trust Automation

San Luis Obispo · motion control, power electronics, industrial automation, and counter-UAS systems

C-UASRFmotion controlpower systemsdefense

Products / direction: Trust Automation publicly lists custom motors, linear drives, digital drives, assemblies, cybersecurity, and C-UAS technologies. Its counter-drone products include SUADS for layered fixed-site/rapidly deployable protection and the GAT UAS Jammer for GNSS-band counter-UAS use.

Capstone ideas

Passive RF drone-presence lab rig: receive-only spectrum monitor that classifies common drone-control/GNSS-band activity from benign test signals and logs confidence over time.
Directional RF localization demo: antenna-switching or phased-sensor proof of concept that estimates bearing to a low-power test transmitter.
Motor-drive predictive maintenance: collect current ripple, temperature, vibration, and load data from a small actuator to detect bearing/friction anomalies.
C-UAS operator display prototype: non-jamming dashboard that fuses simulated RF detections, camera tracks, and geofence status for fixed-site defense exercises.

Edge Autonomy / Redwire

San Luis Obispo manufacturing presence · long-endurance small UAS

VTOLlong enduranceISRpayloadsfuel cell

Products / direction: Public materials describe the VXE30 / Stalker family as a rugged Group 2 small UAS with autonomous VTOL, long endurance, modular payloads, multi-UAS control, small logistics footprint, and ISR payload support. Edge Autonomy materials and social posts identify San Luis Obispo as a manufacturing site for VXE30 / Stalker aircraft.

Capstone ideas

Endurance-aware power estimator: model battery/fuel-cell state, wind, payload draw, and mission profile to predict safe return margins.
Payload timing and synchronization board: GPS-disciplined timestamping for EO/IR or multi-sensor payloads with post-flight alignment tools.
Quiet-UAS acoustic test kit: calibrated microphone array and analysis software to compare propeller, motor, and airframe noise signatures.
Rapid assembly verification fixture: embedded checklist sensors that confirm wings, booms, payload, battery, and connectors are correctly seated before launch.

TRIC Robotics

San Luis Obispo County · autonomous agricultural robotics

ag roboticsUV-Cstrawberriesfield autonomysensing

Products / direction: TRIC Robotics builds tractor-scale autonomous robots for chemical-free pest and disease control, especially in strawberries. Public materials emphasize ultraviolet-light treatment, electric bug-vacuum capability, farm-ready autonomy, improved crop yield, and expansion into broader specialty-crop automation.

Capstone ideas

UV dose mapping system: sensor bar that records robot speed, lamp output, canopy distance, and estimated dose delivered per crop row.
Night-row navigation module: low-light crop-row following using camera + IMU, with confidence scoring and safe-stop behavior.
Bug-vacuum effectiveness monitor: airflow, pressure, current, and debris-sensing instrumentation to estimate field performance and maintenance needs.
Farm autonomy ops dashboard: route progress, row coverage, missed-area heatmap, faults, and service scheduling for multi-robot nightly operations.

FarmBot

San Luis Obispo · open-source CNC farming robots

open sourceCNC roboticseducationRaspberry Pisensors

Products / direction: FarmBot makes open-source CNC farming machines such as FarmBot Genesis and Genesis XL. The systems use stepper motors, encoders, Raspberry Pi/Farmduino electronics, interchangeable tools, cameras, watering, seeding, and soil sensors for automated raised-bed gardening, education, research, accessibility, and small-scale experimentation.

Capstone ideas

Computer-vision weed classifier: camera-based plant/weed segmentation with a confidence threshold and safe manual-review workflow.
Soil-sensor tool head: modular probe for moisture, temperature, EC, and pH with calibration routines and spatial heatmaps.
Closed-loop watering controller: use weather, soil moisture, plant type, and evapotranspiration estimates to reduce water use.
Low-cost encoder/stall-detection upgrade: improve position reliability and fault recovery for an open-source gantry robot.

Scout AI

Near Paso Robles test/training activity · AI for defense robotics

robot foundation modelsair/ground/maritimeGPS-deniedvisionfield data

Products / direction: Scout AI describes Fury as a foundation model for military robotics that reasons over real-time sensor data and natural-language instructions, coordinates air/ground/maritime robotic systems, runs on COTS hardware, supports vision-based passive sensing, and is designed for GPS/comms-denied environments. Public customer material references robot testing and data collection at Forge, an unmanned-systems training center near Paso Robles.

Capstone ideas

Field-data quality scorer: tool that grades robot logs for sensor coverage, time sync, dropped frames, GPS-denied segments, and annotation usefulness.
Vision-only navigation benchmark: repeatable test course and metrics for RGB/thermal navigation under day/night and degraded-GPS conditions.
Natural-language mission parser: constrained parser that converts operator intent into a safe, auditable mission plan for a simulated robot.
Edge inference power profiler: measure latency, thermal limits, and battery impact of small autonomy models on embedded GPU/CPU boards.

Most EE-relevant project shapes

Best pure EE fit

RF sensing, power telemetry, motor-drive diagnostics, payload interface boards, time synchronization, battery/endurance estimation, embedded safety interlocks.

Best robotics/autonomy fit

Vision-based navigation, row following, precision landing, HIL flight-control testing, robot-log replay, sensor-fusion dashboards.

Suggested outreach framing

Lead with a subsystem prototype, not “we want to build a whole drone.”
Offer test infrastructure or data/diagnostic tooling; companies often need these and they fit capstone constraints.
Keep defense projects non-weaponized: simulation, detection, telemetry, safety, and operator-awareness tools are safer academic fits.
Ask each company for one pain point: payload integration, reliability, field logs, test automation, or operator visibility.

Public sources consulted: Inspired Flight company and careers pages; Zone 5 Technologies product page; Trust Automation C-UAS press release; Redwire / Edge Autonomy Stalker public materials; TRIC Robotics product page and coverage; FarmBot product/open-source pages; Scout AI public site and Foxglove customer story. Last reviewed Aug. 12, 2026.