Fonds Souverain : Are you a pure software company ?

Renard Autonomous System AI is a company we created to solve a fundamental problem in the IoT: edge AI is too heavy. We realized that objects were shipping computers that were increasingly powerful, notably through platforms like Nvidia Jetson and so was becoming more expensive to manufacture and non-versatile by essence. It appeared that we could give autonomy to objects in a more agile and less costly. In fact, by integrating our own chips onto a real system, we make it autonomous and intelligent. This is the whole vocation of Renard Autonomous Systems AI. Artificial intelligence actually allows us to add use cases and make increasingly intelligent objects.

Fonds Souverain : Your virtual Machine RenardOS is a key compenent…

Yes, the idea is that any application, whether sensors or a UI application needs to work on native code that must be compiled and executed with a virtual machine. We have created our own language and our own virtual machine which is the most powerful in terms of telemetry on the market. This virtual machine is in fact the brain of connected objects, for example a drone or a car. It allows very great agility of any operating system of the machines through flexibility, agility, energy consumption and latency: we allow autonomy and a change of vocation of these machines in real time.

Fonds Souverain : Does it work on any machine ?

Yes. There is a total abstraction layer thanks to the scripting language, the bytecode and the compatibility with any firmware and any SDK. RenardOS can operate at a high level giwing a full control over various UAVs with the exact same code base.

Fonds Souverain : Is security important in IoT?

Yes, in terms of security, our software system allows a 100% secure state. Reverse engineering is impossible, quite simply because we process the code at a very low level. RenardOS is protected at various levels with different methods to make as difficult as possible reverse engineering and information gathering:

• Unique encryption system: the VM can be built with different bytecode encryption keys for any drone or any groups of drone.
• Encrypted bytecode with 100% entropy: the same code, compiled twice, will result in two completly different outputs.
• Volatile Bytecode: the bytecode is stored in the RAM, therefore, if stopped or destroy, the bytecode would never be recovered.
• eFuse and encrypted ROM and RAM: the RenardOS is flashed on a chip on which eFuse are burn, making it almost impossible to access the compiled state of the VM. Furthermore, the RAM and the ROM can be encrypted, making it even more complicated to access.
• Drone to Drone indetectable and incorruptible real time communication over the air

Fonds Souverain : What is autonomy for you ?

This is about having no whatsoever any contact with any computer, pilot or any other objects outside of the defined autonomous system while executing missions that have been decided or are decided now. Our systems allow complete autonomy of objects without them being detectable by radio waves, so in use of drones, for example, the drones no longer emit radio waves. the drone can be reprogrammed in real time and the swarming is of course possible which allows us to coordinate the drones among themselves us.

Fonds Souverain : Is it a one object one pilot solution ?

No. We have also an installable mobile interface installable on any smartphone that allows a single operator to control by voice multiple drones for instance from 1 to 1000. This provides great ease of use and significantly reduces the importance of costs. Training, pilots are no longer needed.

Fonds Souverain : Has AI changed everything for you ?

We are as well a research lab as we train artificial intelligence micro-models which carry out very specific recognition tasks, for example topography images, and which are executed at a speed which was previously unknown, particularly due to our virtual machine which is the most agile on the market. The embedded tensors capacities allow us to inject on the fly micro AI models (wifi, Bluetooth, radio, lora…).

We are able to produce integrated kits for the autonomy of objects at prices which today are unrivaled in the market and all with an efficiency in the field which is quite extraordinary.

Fonds Souverain : where is your competition ?

Our competitors are for example in the United States Auterion. From  what we understand, they have a model where artificial intelligence is run on super computers so it is a model which is relatively expensive and heavy whereas we have a model which is flexible, less expensive and adaptable to any machine. We are also ahead in the fact that we have security given all the bytecode processing that is unmatched today.

Fonds Souverain : where does the name Renard come from ?

The name Renard comes from two sources. The first, is the name of a ship of the Surcouf brothers, the Renard, who defeated an English ship much larger than he was. And the second, is the Renard resistance network in France during the Second World War global. So it was chosen through these two examples to magnify the idea of an asymmetric gain.