@AuManufacturing Conversations episode 14 — Dr William Crowe and Dr Hiranya Jayakody from HEO Robotics

In episode 14 of @AuManufacturing Conversations with Brent Balinski, we hear from Dr William Crowe and Dr Hiranya Jayakody from HEO Robotics.

The pair began HEO while they were PhD candidates at UNSW Sydney, initially with a focus on asteroid mining. 

Today they are pursuing a beautifully simple goal: image anything within the Solar System on demand. And last month they launched their first publicly-available product: HEO Inspect.

HEO currently uses other companies’ satellite-mounted cameras to do their work, pointing and clicking with enough precision to capture objects whizzing by at 15 kilometres per second relative velocity.   

However, they’re also building their own cameras at their office in Sydney’s CBD, and have just secured a factory in Botany as manufacturing becomes more important to their ambitions and a magic number of 2,500 cameras in orbit.

“The most exciting thing is that we’re moving towards a situation where we have our own cameras going up. So not every satellite has a camera aboard. There’s about 500 cameras [in] total in space today. We want that to get up to at least 2,500 to fulfil our ambitions. And so the way to do that is to supply the cameras as well. And so we’re doing a bit of manufacturing based on what we’ve learned from people’s cameras today. And we’re building those cameras right here in Australia and then providing them to people who would send up satellites.”

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Episode guide

1:30 — An explanation of what HEO does plus Crowe’s background in academia.

5 — Infinity Avionics and other suppliers. Transferring camera assembly to a new site in Botany.

6:40 — How the co-founders met.

8:55 — What’s needed to make asteroid mining feasible.

12 — The paparazzi in space. Why 2,500?

14:50 — Getting satellite operators to share their data.

16:50 — Finding their purpose as a business.

20:10 — Unusual laws in the US made half a century ago and how they give HEO an advantage.

21:40 — The great thing about being a space business based in Australia.

22:45 — A (nuanced) explanation of crowdedness in orbits.

25:30 — Who are their customers? Preparing for a trip aboard Space Machines Company’s Optimus-1.

28 — The team, plus their view on the engineering skills shortage.

31:30 — The skilled migration announcement.

33:20 — HEO Inspect, the company’s first publicly-available product. A world-first, invented in Sydney.

36:10 — 2022 as a breakout year for space junk appreciation.

41 — The value of shortening the supply chain by building a local manufacturing ecosystem.

Main picture: Crowe (left) and Jayakody (image credit www.austrade.gov.au)