For many Drexel students, experiential learning through co-op anchors
in-class academic experiences and theoretical foundations to
post-graduation opportunities. For others, harnessing those
opportunities early can become the defining feature of an undergraduate
experience, as is the case for the team of students behind Raptor
Defense Company, a defense technology startup working to develop Viper,
an autonomous, lightweight unmanned ground vehicle (UGV).
Andy Zhang, a Junior studying mechanical engineering, has been a part of
Raptor Defense Co. since its early days, inspired to join while
completing the STAR Scholars Program in the summer of his freshman year.
The catalyst for this college-defining decision was a LinkedIn post from
the founder, electrical engineering major Andrew DeLuca. Since then,
each step of Andy’s Drexel career has been colored by the demands,
challenges, and triumphs of working on developing an autonomous rover
with real-world life-saving applications. As Andy puts it, “Building is
difficult, but if it’s exciting, you’re willing to put more resources
and energy into it.”
What resources does a high-tech startup demand to get off the ground?
Raptor began as an exploratory effort, aimed at developing a rover that
could detect and defuse landmines, thus preventing loss of life from
human-led explosive ordnance disposal. The early phase of project
development was shaped by the opportunities and limitations of campus
life, from tinkering in empty classrooms to testing a preliminary
“Frankenstein” rover in Drexel Park. In the first six months that Andy
worked with Raptor, the large team of software, electrical, and
mechanical engineers was shaved down to just 13 core members. Springing
from mission-driven curiosity were the beginnings of an all-in business
venture.
One crucial step in this transformation was the move to an off-campus
house to create a space to build and grow as a team. Andy understands
this phase as “the most intense period of [his] life,” given its
incredible demands of balance and discipline. While the operations and
aspirations of Raptor Defense Co. ramped up, coursework and co-op did
not fall away. In fact, for Andy, quarters spent in the workplace for
co-op provided the unique opportunity for direct application of
technical skills learned on the job, sometimes in the same day.
Studying, working, and building together in a shared space was not
without its challenges, but with a
$20,000 investment
earned at the Drexel Startup Fest presented by the Close School of
Entrepeneurship in late 2024, the team had the momentum to keep moving
forward.
For Raptor Defense Co., that movement meant graduating out of their
shared house and into a warehouse space that could accommodate a growing
operation, as well as continued participation in conferences allowing
deeper engagement with other UGV startups. In the past year and a half,
representatives of the company have attended conferences surrounding the
topics of Explosive Ordnance Disposal, UGV’s, and ground robotics. These
events have taken place across the world; spanning locations such as
Ukraine, Detroit, and Washington DC.
As Andy and his teammates move towards the end of their Drexel careers,
the stakes are increasingly real. To have gotten to this point is a
testament to the team itself: Cesar, Andrew, Bryan, Hemanth, Nick,
Josiah, Akil, and Tommy each bring a distinct mix of technical ability,
initiative, and trust to Raptor Defense Co.
To continue beyond Drexel necessitates the professionalization of the
operation, where the team can stay on and be supported financially for
their contributions. The opportunity to continue to build, retaining the
autonomy and ownership that comes from working at your own startup, is
something Andy hopes to maintain. Raptor Defense Co., after all, has
become the unifying thread of his college experience, instilling a
strong sense of responsibility and life-changing insight into the
possibilities presented by entrepreneurship in a highly technical
industry. Regardless of the future of Raptor, in Andy’s mind the
takeaway is clear, that “when you work on something for long enough and
hard enough, you realize you can bend the world so that you don't have
to wait for things to happen.”