subdron

Austrian developer of RON-OS, an autonomous navigation system that lets underwater drones inspect subsea structures without GPS and at zero visibility, for commercial and defence users.

subdron GmbH, founded in 2018 and headquartered in Lauterach in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg, develops, produces and services underwater drone systems. The company, led by founder and CEO Thomas Vonach, has a team of 18 and offices in Portugal and Germany. Scientific advisers from Fraunhofer IOSB and INESC TEC support its work.

Its core technology is Relative Object Navigation (RON), a patent-pending navigation stack that positions an autonomous underwater vehicle relative to the structure it inspects rather than by GPS, USBL or pre-mapping. Packaged as RON-OS, the software is hardware-independent and already runs on the iQua Sparus II AUV; integration with Fraunhofer's DeDave platform for depths down to 6,000 m is under development, while current systems operate down to 200 m. Using acoustic sensors, 3D volumetric sonar and optical cameras, missions return centimetre-accurate 3D point clouds with more than 12,000 points per square metre. Customers can license RON-OS for their own vehicles or commission subdron for managed inspections.

Besides ports, ship hulls and offshore installations, subdron addresses defence and security users with persistent monitoring of critical subsea infrastructure such as cables and pipelines, with mission data kept under European control. The company names missions for the Port of Rotterdam, Hamburg Port Authority, Port of Antwerp-Bruges, Scandlines and German customs, including the detection of a foreign compartment on a customs vessel's hull in Hamburg. It sponsors NATO's maritime unmanned-systems exercise REPMUS 2026 and states that it maintains an active exchange with the German Navy.