About Fotokite

Our Vision
To provide Public Safety teams with accessible and reliable situational awareness tools to help them stay safe, save lives, and preserve property. Every day.
Our Culture
Humble. High Performance. High Impact.

We are motivated every day by the life-saving impact our customers make and we work tirelessly to create and provide the best possible tools to enable public safety teams with situational awareness that they can access on a daily basis.

We embrace humility as the key ingredient needed to make our international team culture work at full speed. Our company culture emphasizes a strong collaborative workspace, promotes teamwork, and encourages each team member to realize individual growth while meeting a strong impact-oriented shared mission.

Engineering
Cutting-edge technology development is a cornerstone of our team and products, where functionality meets design. Fotokite develops purpose-driven solutions from the ground up, with nearly all of our system components designed in-house to meet our customer needs.
Software developer in the process of coding
Cutting-edge technology development is a cornerstone of our team and products, where functionality meets design. Fotokite develops purpose-driven solutions from the ground up, with nearly all of our system components designed in-house to meet our customer needs.
Our Values

Fotokite designs and deploys advanced situational awareness technology to support public safety professionals in the protection of and in service to communities across the globe. Headquartered in Switzerland, Fotokite provides an accessible and accountable system to capture aerial perspectives that serve the public through our customers, from firefighting to emergency management and police. All members of the company are driven to develop solutions based on the understanding that the public good is always the primary consideration, guided by the following principles:

 

  • We commit to applying our technology, skills, and partnerships for the benefit of society, its members, and the surrounding environment.
  • We commit to enabling overt, accountable use cases of Fotokite technology, specifically in support of public interest organizations and the people they serve.
  • We commit to seek out and collaborate exclusively with partners that prioritize public safety while respecting individual privacy and upholding operational accountability.
  • We proactively avoid working with departments and agencies with a continued track record of abuse of power.
Where we came from
ETH-Zurich Spin-off company with offices in Zurich, Syracuse, and Boulder. Backed by Credit Suisse Entrepreneur Capital, Sony Innovation Fund, 360 Capital Partners, and Qualcomm Ventures.
2021

Fotokite wins prestigious design awards including the IF Gold Design Award 2021 and 2021 Swiss Design Prize, which reflect the practicability and usability of the Fotokite Sigma.

2020

Fotokite launches the industry-standard Sigma Rooftop product configuration. Manufacturing ramp-up continues with Fotokite’s expanded manufacturing facilities based in the USA.

2019

Successful firefighting customer trials lead up to Fotokite’s first public safety product launched into the USA Fire & Rescue market alongside Pierce Manufacturing Inc., the world’s largest fire apparatus manufacturer.

2018

Fotokite wins 1st prize at GENIUS NY, the world’s largest UAS accelerator program. Fotokite technology becomes accessible to every US public safety team to use without pilot certification based on a combination of the FAA’s Reauthorization Bill and Fotokite’s actively tethered UAS approach as a fully pilot-free system.

2016

Fotokite begins dedicated work on industrial grade systems, then further refines company focus towards public safety solutions, leveraging previous generations of Fotokite product and production experience.

2014

Perspective Robotics is founded as a newly created ETH Zurich Spin-off and receives the first ever NCCR Spin Fund Grant. Fotokite featured on the TED stage.

2011 - 2013

Tethered localization & interaction “Fotokite” concept born at the ETH Zurich Flying Machine Arena as part of Sergei Lupashin’s PhD work. First tethered prototypes flown. Initial concept focused on news & broadcast applications and tested with customers including the BBC.