Announcing Trace

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of our nano drone, Trace. Designed to meet the pressing needs of national security, law enforcement, and critical infrastructure management, Trace provides field operators with a trusted and affordable American-made nano UAV. The pocket-sized drone offers the capabilities of much larger drones in a nano form factor, enabling advances in safety, detectability, portability, cost, and scope of use. We are unaware of any drone that achieves this level of capability at this scale.

Trace is a crucial next step in our mission to provide customers with the world’s most capable small UAS. After four years of non-stop innovation and testing with DoD and law enforcement partners, we’re proud to offer the best ISR nano drone in the world today.  

Trace’s extraordinarily small size offers a range of benefits:

• Safety Weighing just 153 grams, Trace is well below the FAA’s intrinsically safe weight threshold. This means Trace can be used in more settings by a wider range of operators without risk to personnel, bystanders, or equipment.

• Stealth Trace provides unmatched covert reconnaissance capabilities through an exceptionally low noise signature, gimbal-stabilized thermal camera and 48 MP EO cameras for 24x zoom and tactical awareness in all conditions.

• Indoor and confined space operation Trace measures 12” across in flight, making it easy to fly through tight spaces, using its seven laser range finding sensors to assist in avoiding obstacles. Downward facing visual position sensors enable full position control without GPS, even in the dark, with the downward facing scene illuminator.

• Portability Trace’s small size makes it easy to take anywhere. The tactical configuration, shown below, with Trace, Vision2 GCS, and a IP-67 protective field case fits in a small backpack weighs only 3 lbs.

Trace’s small size does not require compromising on performance, with specs fully capable of keeping up with systems weighing 10 times as much. Trace is capable of flying in 25 knot winds and has an over 30 minute flight time on a single standard battery and up to 45 minutes with the endurance battery.  Trace’s carbon fiber and titanium airframe and IP-53 design makes sure it remains tough, despite the light weight. The proprietary Poplar radio keeps a reliable link over up to a 2 km range, using dynamic frequency hopping and AES-256 encryption to keep the link robust in demanding environments. Between Trace and its Vision2 controller, there is ample computing power to run a wide range of AI assisted autonomy for object classification and tracking. 

Trace continues Vantage’s decade-long track record of innovation for the world’s most demanding customers, including all branches of the US DoD, SOCOM, DHS, CNN, national, state, and local law enforcement, and our allies abroad. Building on our expertise developing Snap, Vesper, and our Vision2 controller, Trace incorporates many new patent-pending drone hardware technologies to enable these significant advancements, including a novel folded-PCBA airframe and an exceptional 22 gram 2-axis stabilized EO/IR camera.

See product details here.

Trace is ready for purchase for select customers. Contact sales@vantagerobotics.com for additional information.