Johnny Carni's WaiV Robotics wants to make ship-launched drones recoverable

Why it matters

WaiV Robotics is attacking the constraint that keeps maritime drones from becoming repeatable infrastructure: safe recovery on moving vessels without crew on deck.

Johnny Carni is taking WaiV Robotics from maritime robotics R&D toward customers with a system aimed at the awkward half of ship-based drone operations: getting the aircraft back after the mission.

The London-based venture, profiled by Tech.eu on July 6, has built an autonomous recovery platform for vertical takeoff and landing UAVs operating from moving vessels. WaiV Robotics is not trying to sell another drone airframe. Carni's bet is that offshore drones are already useful enough in the air, while the missing commercial layer is the infrastructure that lets them land repeatedly on a deck that is pitching, rolling, yawing, drifting and moving vertically with the sea.

Carni is a former naval helicopter pilot, and that background matters here. Tech.eu quotes him saying that landing on a moving vessel is "one of the hardest things a pilot can do." Before WaiV Robotics, he spent four years in Singapore working with coast guards and maritime operators, where he says he kept hearing the same request: they wanted drones that could operate reliably from boats and ships. WaiV Robotics says the team began research in summer 2022 and spent the following years prototyping and validating the system before moving toward manufacturing.

That timeline is worth separating from the launch cycle. WaiV Robotics emerged from stealth on May 5 with a EUR6.4 million seed round, equivalent to $7.5 million, according to EU-Startups and DroneLife. The named investors were not disclosed. WaiV Robotics then announced a U.S. market launch on June 16 ahead of the Energy Drone & Robotics Summit in Houston, where it planned to exhibit from June 22 to 24, according to a PRNewswire release.

The landing problem is a control problem

Most commercial drone landing systems assume the ground will stay where it is. A drone can use GPS, cameras and visual markers to line up with a stationary pad, descend slowly, and touch down. At sea, the target has moved by the time the aircraft reaches it.

Carni's explanation to Tech.eu is blunt: if the drone keeps following the platform's current position, it is always late. The aircraft has to predict where the pad will be moments later and fly to that interception point. WaiV Robotics frames its system around that prediction problem, then adds the mechanical pieces required after contact.

WaiV Robotics' recovery stack has three main parts. The first is a gyro-stabilized platform that keeps the landing surface level as a vessel moves. The second is a marine-grade pad that grips the drone and absorbs the higher impact forces created by landing on a moving target. The third is a catch-lock-release mechanism that mechanically secures the landing skids immediately after touchdown, keeping the aircraft from sliding, bouncing or rolling off the deck.

The system tracks the returning drone with LiDAR and radar, according to Tech.eu, which allows operation at night and in poor visibility. The drone holds roughly 10 to 15 meters above the vessel, after which WaiV Robotics' landing computer connects to the aircraft's flight controller and generates the final approach inputs. Carni described it to Tech.eu as a "virtual pilot" taking over from the holding point to touchdown.

The design choice that may matter most commercially is breadth of compatibility. The WaiV Robotics website describes support for multirotor, fixed-wing VTOL and helicopter-style UAVs.

A beachhead in offshore energy

WaiV Robotics is initially selling into offshore energy, where distance, weather and inspection frequency make the landing constraint expensive. The June 16 U.S. launch release pitches the platform for wind turbine inspection, oil and gas infrastructure maintenance, leak detection, asset monitoring and offshore operations vessels.

That is the right first market for a system that needs to prove reliability under hard operating conditions. Offshore operators already pay for vessel time, crew safety procedures and inspection windows. A drone that can fly once from a ship and then require manual recovery is useful. A drone that can land, lock, release and repeat from the same moving deck starts to look like ship infrastructure.

Carni's roadmap points in that direction. The landing itself is autonomous today, according to Tech.eu. The company's stated goal is to remove the need for anyone on deck, which becomes especially relevant for unmanned surface vessels that may have no crew aboard at all.

The current product handles UAVs up to 15 kilograms, according to EU-Startups and DroneLife. WaiV Robotics' roadmap includes smaller 3 kilogram drones and larger carrier-class aircraft in the 100 kilogram to 300 kilogram range. WaiV Robotics also says the current platform can operate from vessels as small as 10 meters, a claim that matters because smaller boats move more aggressively than larger offshore vessels.

The race is around the deck, not the drone

WaiV Robotics is entering a market with adjacent specialists already working on pieces of the problem. Stable AS sells gyro-stabilized UAV platforms for maritime and offshore environments, including landing pads and containerized hangar configurations. AerogridUAV works on autonomous landing software for moving platforms. UAVLAS offers precision positioning systems for ship-based drone landings. Target Arm builds robotic recovery systems for drones on moving platforms.

WaiV Robotics' pitch is integration. Stabilization alone helps. Guidance alone helps. A grippy pad helps. A lock helps. Carni is arguing that maritime drone recovery needs all of those pieces to work as one controlled sequence, from the aircraft's descent through impact absorption and immediate securing.

The public record still leaves gaps. WaiV Robotics has not disclosed seed investors, valuation, revenue, customer names or deployment counts. Companies House shows WAIV ROBOTICS LTD was incorporated in the U.K. on January 30, 2026, with Jonathan Benzion Carni as the sole listed director. A separate Companies House filing lists Carni and Robert Zickel as persons with significant control, each with more than 25% and up to 50% ownership. That U.K. entity is newer than the product history WaiV describes, and the public materials also list WaiV Robotics Inc. in Virginia.

For now, WaiV Robotics has enough funding and enough product definition to test whether offshore customers will buy recovery infrastructure as the missing layer around drones. Carni's strongest insight is operational rather than aerodynamic: the drone market has spent years improving aircraft, sensors and autonomy, while shipboard recovery remained a deck problem passed back to pilots and crew. WaiV Robotics is trying to turn that deck problem into a product.