Before Vantage Robotics supplied military operators, its CEO and co-founder Tobin Fisher tested drone usability from a lawn chair outside his house. He stopped people walking past, handed them a drone and watched them try to fly. That feedback loop helps explain Vantage’s journey from consumer photography to defense reconnaissance and, now, technology that other robotics companies can build into their own products. The applications changed, but the discipline remained: understand the user, tackle the difficult engineering and keep iterating. On a recent Dawn of Autonomy podcast, Fisher described a company that has grown by connecting those steps. Its three major drones and two ground control products represent more than an expanding portfolio that increasingly reaches beyond Vantage’s own aircraft.
Consumer Drone Design Shaped Vantage Robotics
Fisher brought mechanical engineering, product design and startup experience to drones. At IDEO, he learned to turn emerging technology into products people could actually use. A subsequent micro fuel cell venture introduced him to Army customers and government funding. A software company taught him how quickly digital products could reach customers, but also clarified what he missed. In the end, he focused on hardware, which he described as being “deep in his bones. And drones combined all of his interests.
After watching a fellow kite surf racer fly one, Fisher bought his own and began exploring where the technology could create value. He incorporated Vantage on December 24, 2013. Its initial mission focused on helping consumers capture meaningful moments. Fisher asked people to show him their favorite pictures and videos. He noticed that people, rather than scenery, dominated their selections. That observation drove practical requirements. A drone intended for social settings needed to travel easily, operate quietly, reduce safety risks and require little effort to fly.
Vantage translated those priorities into its first drone called “Snap.” He and his team delivered in volume right out of the gate. Shipping mattered as much as inventing. “A whole lot of companies discovered that making one drone is a lot easier than making a thousand,” he said.
Those consumer requirements eventually opened the company up to other markets. By 2016, CNN approached Vantage about flying over people. This gave the company an opportunity to apply its safety engineering to journalism. Fisher described the effort as both a technical and regulatory challenge. The team had to demonstrate safety while helping establish how to test it. They secured one of the first operations over people waivers from the FAA, just around the time the agency launched its Part 107 rule.
Working With the Department of Defense Starts With the User
The Army’s Short Range Reconnaissance program offered Vantage another transition. Fisher saw an opportunity to use government research and development funding to develop its consumer technology into a defense product.
The underlying design method still applied, but the conversations required adjustment. At an early Defense Innovation Unit event, Fisher approached a colonel and asked about challenges Vantage might help solve. The response stopped him: “I’m not going to discuss our weaknesses with you, sir.”
That encounter taught Fisher that customer discovery in defense requires more than importing a consumer research script. “Everyone’s willing to talk, you just need to figure out how to put the question in the right way,” he explained.
Vantage’s subsequent work with operational users shaped Vesper, its first defense reconnaissance drone. Portability meant less burden on soldiers. Simple controls reduced distraction. Quiet operation helped avoid revealing an operator’s location. Night capability, adverse-weather performance and longer endurance gave users more operational flexibility.
According to Fisher, Vesper delivered nearly an hour of flight time. More importantly for Vantage’s business, delivering the capabilities it promised helped establish credibility with defense customers and generate additional research opportunities.
Fischer’s experience provides a template to work successfully with the Department of Defense (DoD). Use the Vantage playbook: learn the mission, deliver against it and use the resulting trust to pursue the next problem.
Trace Nano Drone: Five Years of Small UAS Iteration
Those DoD opportunities brought pressure as well as growth. Fisher recalled winning every research opportunity Vantage pursued during one period, and then confronting COVID and its disruptions.
The team continued developing hardware and software. One result was Trace, a nano drone that addressed an Army interest in a small reconnaissance aircraft that could reach more users without demanding extensive training. The challenge extended beyond miniaturization. “Can we create a drone that achieves this tiny size, but without sacrificing performance?” Fisher asked, then answered his own question. “Five short years of constant iteration and millions of dollars, and it turns out it’s possible,” he quipped.
The result was Trace, a microdrone. Fisher described Trace at approximately 215 grams with its newer two-cell battery and reported flight endurance exceeding 40 minutes. He also recounted an Army demonstration involving a seven-kilometer flight, a frequency-hopping radio and a stabilized electro-optical and infrared payload.
That development history gives context to Vantage’s success. Each smaller, more capable product reflects sustained investment, repeated testing and lessons carried forward from previous designs.
Vision 2 Controller Connects the Wider Drone Ecosystem
Vantage’s ecosystem story becomes clearest with Vision 2, the controller it developed through DIU’s Soldier Robotic Controller program. Rather than build controls around an existing tablet, the team designed a mobile computer around operational needs. Fisher emphasized portability, sunlight readability and the ability to dim the display for nighttime use. He said the latest screen reaches 3,200 nits and the processor supports edge AI capabilities.
A modular radio architecture extends that design beyond Vantage’s Trace and Vesper aircraft. “We’ve flown every single one of our competitors’ drones with this controller,” Fisher said. He also described using it to control bomb disposal robots and other devices.
That experience supports a broader market direction. Vantage now offers the controller as a component for other companies, including direct competitors. Fisher reported thousands of controller deliveries and a return rate below 4%. He said partner pricing at scale can reach a little over $3,000.
For other manufacturers, the proposition offers an alternative to developing an entire controller themselves. For Vantage, it creates an opportunity to grow through other companies’ platforms, not only its own aircraft. Fisher sees that collaboration as essential to domestic competitiveness.
“What I don’t want to see is an industry where every company spends $10 million, a thousand times, solving the same problem,” he said. “I think especially in an industry like this, it needs to be a web, everyone needs to work together, everyone needs to support each other,” he continued.
Fisher also identified potential partnerships involving Vantage’s camera gimbals and integrations of its small drones with ground robots, police vehicles, aircraft and maritime platforms. He presented those integrations as opportunities ahead, rather than completed deployments.
Audacity and Humility: Tobin Fisher’s Startup Principles
Asked to distill his advice for building and scaling a drone company, Fisher chose two words: “audacity and humility.”
Audacity means attempting problems that established players consider impossible. Early in his drone journey, a prospective adviser told him not to try. Fisher continued anyway and proved him wrong. “Anyone in this industry requires a degree of audacity,” he said. “You’ve got to be willing to say, I am capable of succeeding where others have failed.”
Humility keeps that ambition useful. It requires teams to question assumptions, acknowledge flaws and recognize that engineering confidence does not eliminate uncertainty. “However smart you think you are, we’re all idiots relative to the complexity of the challenge we are facing,” Fisher noted. For him, that recognition creates “that culture of self-questioning, testing.”
Vantage’s journey connects both principles. Audacity drove the company toward quieter aircraft, longer endurance and capable nano drones. Humility sent Fisher back to users, whether they wore uniforms or happened to walk past his house.
Vantage’s next chapter will test those same principles beyond its own product line. By offering Vision 2 to other manufacturers, Fisher is betting that technology developed for one company’s drones can help others move faster, too. Vantage will still build aircraft that earn customers’ trust, but also will supply components that earn competitors’ business. For Fisher, strengthening the broader ecosystem starts with one question: “How can we be stronger together?”