FRANK AUTONOMOUS
FRANK AUTONOMOUS is building the autonomy layer for the lunar surface, starting with a 5.9 kg solar rover delivered to the Moon in 2028 that operates without human intervention. Their brain-inspired decision engine, FRANK, runs onboard a Raspberry Pi with 1M parameters, eliminating the need for Earth-based remote driving.
- Aerospace
- Artificial Intelligence
- Hardware
- Robotics
- Space Technology
Funding
Founders
Product
Problem
Every meter a rover drives on the Moon is currently piloted by a person on Earth, operating with a 2.6-second communication delay. This manual teleoperation drives up mission costs and limits the scale, speed, and feasibility of lunar surface operations, constraining the emerging planetary economy.
Solution
FRANK AUTONOMOUS builds a full-stack autonomy platform for planetary exploration, removing the human from the lunar driving loop. Their Mission 1 deploys a 5.9 kg solar rover named SAPPERS, delivered to the lunar surface in 2028, which navigates completely autonomously. The system is powered by FRANK (Flexible Recurrent Active-memory Neural Kernel), a brain-inspired decision engine with roughly 1 million parameters trained via reinforcement learning from scratchcars, small enough to run onboard a Raspberry Pi. This approach dramatically reduces rover size, weight, and cost, positioning autonomy as the core enabler for scalable lunar operations rather than an add-on.
Target Audience
Primary customers are space agencies, lunar mission operators, and commercial enterprises planning surface exploration and resource utilization on the Moon.
Features
- FRANK: a brain-inspired neural decision engine with ~1M parameters, trained entirely through reinforcement learning and running onboard a Raspberry Pi
- SAPPERS: a 5.9 kg solar-powered rover priced at $3.85M delivered to the lunar surface, designed for minimal mass due to its small onboard autonomy footprint
- SUNBEAM: a solar tower base station providing charging, communications, and thermal management for sustained rover operations
- Full-stack autonomy that eliminates the need for Earth-based teleoperation, removing the 2.6-second human-in-the-loop delay