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Mickey Cowden
Opening Doors in the Drone World By Jennifer Poff Cooper “Life will throw something at you,” says Mickey Cowden. “I’m surprised at how wrong I have been.” But he soldiers on.
“The drone market has exploded in the past few years,” said Mickey Cowden, founder of the Blacksburg-based Cowden Technologies, which is taking advantage of the phenomenon. The new company works in drone technology, focusing on robotic autonomy. Cowden, a 2004 Virginia Tech graduate with degrees in computer science and math, was part of a Hokie robotics team which was a finalist in an international robotics competition in Abu Dhabi. “It was a great learning experience,” he said. However, as the team was doing field tests, Cowden discovered that they spent so much time switching out batteries and hardware in the drones, it “made me daydream about having it done automatically.” After graduation, Cowden worked at Tech and in industry doing software engineering. In 2015, “a contract fell into my lap.” He started
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his business, which then focused on web app development and mobile app consulting. Now, Cowden Technologies is working on product development. There is a charging component. The technology monitors and recharges batteries, enabling continuous drone operation without human supervision. “The battery charging market has changed quite a bit,” said Cowden. Battery charging is an expectation now. So, he is branching out to other features. One is a smart docking station. A computerized docking module is retrofitted to existing drones and commands can be issued for docking and undocking. Sensors gather information such as identifying the docking platform. A secure docking mechanism ensures the drone is secure on the charging
