Blue Arrow

Blue Arrow is a Ukrainian-American startup, launched in January 2025, that builds GPS-free navigation and fleet control for combat drones. It was formed as a joint venture between Pittsburgh-based KEF Robotics and the Kyiv 3D-vision studio Sensorama Lab , with headquarters in Pittsburgh and research and development run from Kyiv. KEF Robotics dates to 2018 and specialises in visual autonomy for aircraft; Sensorama, founded in 2016, came from virtual-reality, 3D-modelling and 360-degree video work. Co-founders include Fraser Kitchell, who is also chief executive of KEF Robotics, and Olha Pohoda; Sergii Tereshchenko leads Blue Arrow as chief executive.

The company’s navigation works by having onboard cameras film the ground while AI software matches the live feed against pre-loaded high-resolution 3D terrain maps. Inertial sensors track speed, heading and azimuth, so the drone can place itself even while Russian forces jam or spoof satellite signals — making it, in the firm’s words, hard to knock off course. Its products are RII, a command layer that lets a single operator run many drones and missions at once, and MZK, a combined hardware-and-software package sold to Ukrainian units for fast field testing near the front.

The firm has said more than 20 drone manufacturers were integrating its technology, and it sought roughly $3 million in early funding; those figures are company statements. Its work has been highlighted by Ukraine’s digital minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, and it is associated with the Brave1 defence-tech cluster. Beyond Ukraine, Blue Arrow and a Norwegian arm, KEF Robotics Norway, were selected for the German government’s SPRIND “Fully Autonomous Flight 2.0” challenge, which targets last-mile delivery and search-and-rescue in GPS-denied conditions and combines KEF’s Tailwind autonomy stack — terrain-relative navigation, visual-inertial odometry and onboard hazard detection — with Blue Arrow’s multi-drone fleet management. It addresses the same jamming problem as NORDA Dynamics and the US-Ukrainian firm Vermeer , each through its own approach to vision-based, satellite-free navigation.