The company’s solutions enable real-time detection of mines and drone ambushes during UAV reconnaissance flights
This article first appeared on Defender Media and is republished here with permission.
Danish-Ukrainian defence tech company Dropla Tech has raised €2.4 million in investment from the Danish Export and Investment Fund (EIFO), as well as investment firms Maj Invest and Final Frontier, company representatives told Defender Media. The funding will be used to further develop and scale the company’s AI-based technology for detecting explosive devices and other hidden threats on the battlefield.
Dropla Tech was founded in 2023 by four Ukrainians — Vyacheslav Shvaidak, Dmytro Zarubin, Maksym Tkachenko, and Illarion Karnaukh. Today, the 35-member team operates in Denmark and Ukraine, combining European technologies with Ukrainian wartime experience.
The company has developed an innovation in video stream processing that enables the detection of explosive threats in real time without access to external servers. The system integrates with UAV types already in use by the Defence Forces, allowing drone operators to survey terrain for explosive threats on the fly — protecting soldiers’ lives during entry and exit from positions.
Defender Media highlights the most important details from the company’s press release and its founders’ comments.
The company’s flagship product, BLUE EYES, is an autonomous AI-based system for detecting explosive devices trained on real battlefield data. It is designed to work in real time even in environments with lost connection or navigation and requires no external servers. This significantly increases the protection of unit movements and logistics routes that are at risk of remote mining or drone ambushes.
How Dropla Tech’s Blue Eyes system detects explosive objects in real time
Co-founder and CEO of Dropla Tech, Viacheslav Shvaidak, explained to Defender Media that the BLUE EYES system consists of a hardware computing module as well as proprietary software. “The edge processor is available in two versions: one that can be carried in a bag, allowing any of the guys to conduct reconnaissance for mines when moving in or out of a position; and another that is mounted on a drone,” Shvaidak said.
According to the startup’s CEO, the BLUE EYES system is compatible with a wide range of short-range reconnaissance UAVs: it can operate with any drone that provides a stable video stream of the required resolution. “The system is designed to be easily integrated into the ‘drone zoo’ currently in use by the military, since we need to add this capability across the frontline as quickly as possible.”
To develop the system, the team created a dedicated testing range and built Europe’s largest dataset of explosive devices, making its AI training highly adapted to real battlefield conditions.
In addition to BLUE EYES, the company is developing DROPLA VISION — a multisensor mapping platform that integrates optical, multispectral, thermal, magnetometric, and LiDAR data for AI-driven explosive threat detection in humanitarian demining operations.
DROPLA VISION multi-sensor mapping platform
Key capabilities of DROPLA VISION include:
The investment round was led by Maj Invest, one of Denmark’s largest asset managers, together with EIFO, Denmark’s state investment fund with a dedicated €550M program to support Ukraine.
Read more: Ukrainian smart-air defence developer MaXon raises $300,000
Dropla Tech notes that its collaboration with the Ukrainian government’s defence tech cluster Brave1 played a key role in securing investment and advancing the company’s development. Through Brave1, the team gained access to real combat datasets, opportunities for field testing, and direct contact with Ukraine’s Defence Forces.
“Positive testing results through Brave1 and recommendations from Ukrainian soldiers were crucial in investors’ decision-making,” the company said.
The €2.4M investment will go toward expanding BLUE EYES and DROPLA VISION capabilities to detect more object types, growing the team, boosting R&D, and integrating Dropla Tech’s solutions across Defence Forces brigades. The company also plans to expand into other post-conflict regions worldwide.
“Our goal is to detect not only mines but also any other threats — for example, hostile drones lying in ambush,” said Dropla Tech CEO Vyacheslav Shvaidack. “For now, we are focusing on BLUE EYES, since this technology has the potential to save the lives of our soldiers during entry and exit from positions.”
