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Gander Robotics

Investment areas

  • Applied AI & ML
  • Autonomous Systems / Robotics
  • Water / Oceans
Founders & Leadership
Michael Autery
Lael Ayala
Headquarters
Cambridge, MA

Building drone submarines for man-overboard and maritime search & rescue.

The Tough Tech problem we are solving

Each year, man-overboard incidents at sea end in death far more often than they should. Survival rates sit at 28% in the U.S. Navy and 17% in the cruise industry, not because rescue is impossible, but because current protocols depend on human reaction time, visual searches, and manual deployment, a process measured in minutes when seconds determine outcomes. In conditions with low visibility or rough water, the gap between incident and recovery is often unsurvivable.

About our solution

We develop autonomous rescue systems for maritime operations. Our flagship system, the Autonomous Rescue Swimmer (ARS), is hand-tossed into the water during a man-overboard event and uses AI-powered sonar to locate individuals in low-visibility and rough-water conditions where visual search fails. Once on target, it delivers a three-part rescue package: an auto-inflating flotation device, a high-visibility flare, and an RF transmitter for continuous tracking. The result is a faster, more precise handoff to recovery teams, without waiting for human deployment.