Company Name: Gragg Robotics, LLC
Founder: Lucas Gragg, Founder
Where are you based: Waterville, ME
Year founded: 2026
My father and I own a lawn-care business together, and we run five robotic mowers. I got tired of checking each mower one by one and wanted to control them all from one phone. That turned into the idea of one operator commanding a whole fleet of drones.
It started as my web-development and custom-software shop: business websites, web apps, and digital products. The drone-swarm project grew out of that and is now the focus.
Right now it’s one drone, one pilot. For search and rescue, inspection, wildfire mapping, agriculture, and surveying, that ratio makes drone fleets expensive and slow to deploy. I’m building so one operator can command 4 to 12 drones, with no hard ceiling.
Multi-drone coordination has mostly lived in military labs and university research with big budgets. Affordable open autopilot stacks like PX4 are only now making a small-team approach realistic.
Software plus a bolt-on sensor and interface system that lets a single operator command a small fleet: one screen, one set of commands, many drones.
It’s designed to be affordable and built on open PX4/MAVLink hardware, aimed at small teams like search-and-rescue crews and inspectors instead of enterprise or military buyers.
None yet. We’re pre-revenue and pre-hardware. The software runs in simulation only right now.
We’re not prospecting yet; the focus is finishing the prototype. Customer discovery is running through Dirigo Launch.
Finding a mechanical engineer to design the sensor box (placement, materials, the whole physical package), and they’re already well-networked, which opens doors I couldn’t open alone. On top of that, the four-drone simulation working and being accepted into Dirigo Launch’s 2026 cohort.
I assumed the software would be the hard part. It wasn’t. Getting the physical build funded and designed is the actual bottleneck.
The four-drone simulation working end to end, and bringing on a mechanical engineer to design the sensor package. The concept is proven in software; now it’s becoming hardware.
The customer-discovery framework, and Jeff Frank’s lead on the Emergent Ventures prototype grant. That application is underway now.
Sensor package designed and mounted with our mechanical engineer, physical prototype built, first real-drone flights done, a two-drone single-operator test completed, results published, and pilot users in search-and-rescue or inspection trying it out. Demo Day is November 17.
Funding the prototype build and closing the gap between simulation and the real world.
Funding for the prototype hardware, and introductions to search-and-rescue teams, inspectors, or anyone who’d pilot-test a multi-drone system.
Warm introductions to potential pilot users and anyone connected to prototype funding.
Website: graggrobotics.com
LinkedIn: Lucas Gragg
X: @LukesNotPerfect
Best way to reach Lucas: graggrobotics@gmail.com or (207) 242-7351