TF / Autonomous earth intelligence

Ground truth at planetary scale.

Satellites see the surface. We touch it. TerraFirma Robotics builds autonomous drones that land, sample, and verify what is actually happening on Earth: centimeter precision, processed on the aircraft.

System statusNominal
Origin34.42°N 119.85°W
AirframeBlended wing body
ResolutionSub-cm GSD
Revisit3× daily per aircraft

001 / The gap

The most important decisions on Earth run on inferred data.

Climate models are only as good as their inputs. Satellite imagery delivers 30-meter resolution on a weekly cadence. By the time the data arrives, the fire has spread, the crop has failed, the carbon estimate is wrong.

TerraFirma Robotics closes the gap. Our flying-wing aircraft land, deploy a soil probe, analyze terrain and vegetation with on-board visual AI, and capture direct environmental measurements. Verified. Timestamped. Ready for action.

30 m → <1 cm
Resolution / vs. satellite
Weekly → 3× daily
Revisit cadence / per aircraft
Inferred → Sampled
Measurement method

002 / The platform

Direct measurement. On-board intelligence. Global reach.

SYS / Airframe

Blended wing body

Flight efficiency that compounds. The lifting-body airframe extends endurance and range, and across a fleet, the mission economics change entirely.

SYS / Sampling

Direct soil sampling

A retractable probe captures subsurface conditions on contact. You know what is in the ground because the aircraft sampled it.

SYS / Compute

On-board AI

Vision-language models and edge perception run on the aircraft. Imagery is analyzed, classified, and fused before it ever leaves the airframe.

SYS / Autonomy

Autonomous flight

Land, sample, survey, return. No operator in the loop. Obstacle avoidance and replanning are handled on the edge, in flight.

SYS / Comms

Bandwidth-aware uplink

Intelligent compression sends decisions, not raw pixels, over cellular where coverage exists and satellite where it doesn't, anywhere on Earth.

SYS / Fleet

Scalable operations

A modular platform built to scale from single-aircraft research deployments to persistent, large-area monitoring programs.

003 / Applications

Built for high-consequence field decisions.

From precision agriculture to carbon verification, wildfire intelligence, forestry, and conservation: the platform is designed for repeatable ground truth.

Aerial view of agricultural fields APP / 01
APP / 01

Agriculture

Soil health at the plant level. Direct subsurface measurement plus sub-centimeter imagery means you know exactly when and where to irrigate, fertilize, or intervene, field by field, plant by plant.

Forest canopy carbon monitoring APP / 02
APP / 02

Carbon verification

Direct biomass and soil carbon measurement for credits that stand up to scrutiny. No satellite proxies, no model uncertainty: measured carbon, with provenance attached to every data point.

Wildfire intelligence APP / 03
APP / 03

Wildfire intelligence

Real-time fire intelligence during active events: ground truth that guides evacuation and suppression decisions while they still matter, not after the perimeter has moved.

Ecosystem restoration monitoring APP / 04
APP / 04

Conservation & restoration

Track ecosystem recovery against consistent, high-resolution baselines. Detect invasive species before they spread, and prove restoration outcomes with measurements, not estimates.

004 / Provenance

Engineered and built in Santa Barbara, California. Flown wherever the ground truth is.

Compliance
NDAA compliant for government and defense-adjacent use
Manufacturing
US designed and manufactured · secure, domestic supply chain
Compute
NVIDIA-accelerated edge AI · NVIDIA Inception program member
Data integrity
Every measurement verified, geotagged, and timestamped at the point of capture

005 / Contact

If your decisions depend on what's actually on the ground, we should talk.

Request access