Ukrainian Odd Systems Startup Joins Danish Giant Terma to Build AI Drone Interceptor

Ukrainian defense tech startup Odd Systems will collaborate with a Danish defense prime Terma Group to work on a low-cost, AI-powered drone interceptor.

The Ukrainian defense tech company announced the news in a press release on Monday. The startup, founded in 2023 and headquartered in Kyiv, develops and manufactures thermal cameras and FPV drones, with offices in the US, the EU, and elsewhere in Ukraine.

Terma and Odd Systems will work on countermeasures against drones that should tackle a complex problem of detection, tracking, and interception of an incoming UAV with another autonomous UAV, according to the press release.

“The key types of drones to be countered vary widely, from FPVs and Tactical ISR copters (Mavic) to fixed-wing operational level ISR (Zala) and Deep Strike drones (Shahed). Terma and Odd Systems will combine their existing solutions while developing a suite of products to counter these and other aerial threats,” the press release says.

“We look forward to developing a robust autonomous interceptor platform. Such cooperation between the teams from Ukraine and the EU are crucial for the future of European security,” the press release quotes Yaroslav Azhnyuk, co-founder of Odd Systems.

Terma is the largest defense company in Denmark which operates in all key domains – air, sea, land, space. It is especially renowned for its capabilities as an integrator, and its work with various sensors.

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“We are proud to partner with Odd Systems, whose innovation and battlefield-proven platforms are a testament to the strength of Ukrainian engineering. They have demonstrated extraordinary capabilities under extreme conditions and at a pace and cost unmatched by Western manufacturers,” the press release quoted Filip Rensch-Jacobsen, Vice President at Terma Group.

Odd Systems brings its expertise working with FPV drones, thermal cameras, and cooperation with the Ukrainian Defense Forces to deliver a scalable and reliable platform for countering various drone threats that arise in modern warfare, the press release says.

Its founder, Yaroslav Azhnyuk, is also a co-founder of The Fourth Law (TFL), a Ukrainian company developing autonomy systems for first-person view (FPV) drones.

The startup previously announced its first round of investment from a group of venture funds and angel investors, as well as presented its first TFL-1 autonomy module, offering what it calls “last mile” autonomy – technology that enables FPV drones to home on their targets automatically using artificial intelligence (AI), pattern recognition, and forced correlation (making each frame look like the previous frame after recognizing the target-type in its database).

Odd Systems is a camera company, Azhnyuk’s other project, developed both daytime electro-optical (EO) and nighttime thermal (infrared, or IR) camera products and a software platform, the press release says.

As a manufacturing and R&D house, Odd Systems supplies Horska-12, an aerial interceptor FPV platform, as well as Stus-7 and Lupynis-10 strike FPV platforms, supplied both as UAVs and UAS in daytime and nighttime modifications. Locally in Ukraine, it also has developed and produces Kurbas-256 and Kurbas-640 thermal cameras, which by several metrics are the world’s leading IR cameras for defensive FPVs.

Apart from Odd Systems and the Fourth Law, Azhnyuk previously led his Petcube startup into global stardom – one of the key international market players among pet monitoring cameras, with sales of more than a million products to the US, Australia, and Europe.

Odd Systems products – a result of the efforts of a group of entrepreneurs, engineers, operators and FPV enthusiasts according to the press release – include IR cameras Kurbas-256 and Kurbas-640; and EO FPV drones Stus-7, Lupynis-10, Horska-12, and others.

The products are named after prominent intellectuals of the so-called “Executed Renaissance” and “The Sixtiers” – Ukrainian intellectuals of the 20th century prosecuted and executed by the Soviet regime.