Drone supply chain map: who makes each part, and where
The Office of Strategic Capital lends in areas that include robots, batteries and sensors, and reviews a borrower's suppliers for foreign influence. Most magnets and many reducers, cells and cameras come from one country, so a humanoid built from the usual suppliers has makers owned from there at several joints.
The Verdex physical AI map shows the companies at every step of this chain, where their plants are, and how each stands under the rules that apply to the sector. Each step below opens its own page: what happens at that step, who does it, and where.
Materials
- Nd/Pr metal: Neodymium and praseodymium metal, the main rare-earth input to the magnet alloy.
- Dysprosium and terbium: Heavy rare earths for coercivity at rotor temperature, put in by grain-boundary diffusion (or alloyed in on older grades).
- Power switches: Si MOSFETs today, GaN entering: six switches per three-phase joint inverter.
- Silicon wafers: 300 mm silicon wafers for the SoC and the image sensors.
Motors and drives
- NdFeB alloy powder: Melting and strip casting of Nd-Fe-B alloy, 200 to 400 um flakes; hydrogen decrepitation to under 2 mm; jet milling to 2 to 5 um. Output: aligned fine powder.
- Sintered NdFeB magnet: Align in field and press; sinter 1000 to 1100 C; two-stage anneal 850 to 950 C and 400 to 600 C; machine; grain-boundary diffusion of Dy or Tb for coercivity; nickel or epoxy coat; magnetize. Output: sintered NdFeB segments or ring, grade N42SH to N45UH class for joint rotors.
- Outrunner motor: 0.2 mm silicon-steel stator laminations stamped and stacked, high-temperature enameled copper windings (200 to 240 C class), outer rotor bell with bonded arc magnets, two or three ball bearings, anodised aluminium housing; 24 stator slots, 28 magnet poles. Output: outrunner brushless DC motor, 70 to 80 mm stator, 6S to 12S, 350 to 2,100 W continuous, 350 to 445 g.
- Electronic speed controller: Three-phase inverter board: paralleled MOSFETs, gate drivers and a microcontroller running sine-wave or trapezoidal commutation, DC-link capacitors, in a machined aluminium case; opto-isolated signal input; firmware with synchronous rectification and regenerative braking. Output: electronic speed controller, 3S to 12S, 40 to 125 A continuous, 78 to 114 g.
- Propeller: Two routes: (a) carbon-fibre fabric and rovings with epoxy, laid in matched moulds and hot-pressed, optional torsion box between the two shell halves for the light version, balanced; (b) long-fibre pellets (60% glass or carbon fibre in a nylon binder, pultruded into half-inch pellets) injection moulded in CNC-milled mould halves, prop-shaft hole drilled, balanced. Output: fixed or folding propeller, 22 to 33 inch diameter for the band (25 inch on the M400, 22 x 7 on Astro, 33 x 9 on Alta X).
- Propulsion set: Motor bolted to a folding carbon-fibre arm, ESC in the arm or the centre body, propeller on a folding hub; four sets per aircraft, two clockwise and two counter-clockwise. Output: one of four propulsion sets.
Battery pack
- Cathode and anode materials: LFP (hydrothermal or solid state) or NMC precursor to cathode powder; graphite anode. Output: active materials.
- Lithium-ion cell: Electrode mixing, coating, drying, calendering, slitting, stacking or winding, welding, electrolyte fill, sealing, formation. Output: pouch or cylindrical cell, about 3.6 V nominal (13S x 3.6 V matches the G1 54 V charger).
- Battery pack: 13-cell series string (G1) with BMS, quick-release housing and connector; UN38.3 transport test; pack-level protection layers. Output: 0.42 to 2.25 kWh pack, 48 to 67 V class.
Compute
- SoC die: Leading-edge logic fab of the Blackwell GPU + Arm Neoverse V3AE CPU die. Output: Thor die.
- LPDDR5X memory: LPDDR5X die fab and packaging, 128 GB on the T5000 module. Output: LPDDR5X packages.
- GPU or SoC module: SoC packaging, module PCB assembly with DRAM, 699-pin connector, 100 x 87 mm. Output: Jetson T5000 module ($2,999 at 1,000 units) or IGX Thor board.
- Flight processor: Microcontroller or SoC fab and packaging: Arm Cortex-M7 flight MCU (STM32H753/H757, 480 MHz, 2 MB flash) with a Cortex-M3 IO co-processor, or a Qualcomm QRB5165 8-core SoC with GPU, NPU and DSP for a combined companion computer and autopilot. Output: flight MCU (Pixhawk class) or companion SoC (VOXL class).
- Flight controller board: PCB assembly of the processor(s), three IMUs on a temperature-controlled, vibration-isolated sensor board, two barometers and a magnetometer on separate buses with separate LDOs; conformal coating; firmware (PX4 or ArduPilot) loaded. Output: autopilot board: Pixhawk 6X / Cube Orange+ (FMU + IO) or VOXL 2 (16 g, 70 x 36 mm, companion + autopilot).
- GNSS and compass: GNSS receiver module (u-blox NEO-F9P, L1/L5 dual band RTK) on a board with its own STM32H757, an IMU, an RM3100 magnetometer and a Taoglas dual-band antenna; CAN FD to the autopilot. Output: GNSS/compass puck (CubePilot Here4; two per IF800).
- Radio: Software-defined mesh radio module: RF transceiver and power amplifier on a 46 x 51 mm board, 2x2 MIMO, frequency-hopping and AES-256 in firmware, configured for federal M1 to M6 bands (1,625 to 2,500 MHz) or ISM 2.4/5 GHz. Output: datalink module, 34 g (Doodle Labs Mini), 80 Mbps, 50+ km with directional antennas.
- Avionics module: Autopilot board, radio, GNSS, companion compute and power distribution in one enclosure or bay in the centre body; the C100 embeds the radio in the avionics module next to the VOXL compute core. Output: flight avionics.
Perception
- Image sensor: CMOS image sensor fab (global-shutter IR pair + rolling-shutter RGB in the D435i). Output: image sensor die.
- Camera module: Lens, sensor board, IR projector (depth cameras), calibration. Output: depth camera (RealSense D435i on G1) or stereo fisheye pair (NEO, 8.85 MP, 90 Hz).
- Inertial measurement unit: The drone's MEMS IMU step; on the humanoid an IMU sits inside the lidar (Livox Mid-360) and on each link (NEO). Output: 6-axis IMU (TDK ICM-40609 in the Livox Mid-360).
- Thermal camera core: Uncooled vanadium oxide (VOx) microbolometer array on a readout IC, vacuum packaged, 12 um pitch, 640 x 512, with a germanium lens; factory non-uniformity calibration; 60 Hz. Output: LWIR thermal core, 640 x 512, 12 um, 8 to 14 um (Teledyne FLIR Boson / Boson+; DJI's own VOx core on the H30T).
- Gimbal payload: 2- or 3-axis stabilised gimbal: brushless gimbal motors, encoders, IMU, GPS/INS for geolocation, zoom optics (10x to 40x optical), optional laser pointer or rangefinder, slip ring for continuous roll, in a 145 to 920 g housing. Output: EO or EO/IR gimbal payload: NextVision X80 145 g (40x optical), Raptor EO/IR (1,280 x 720 thermal), Trillium HD40 series 650 to 840 g, DJI H30T 920 g.
Robot
- Drone assembly: Four propulsion sets, the avionics module, the battery pack and the gimbal payload built onto the airframe and wired: one quadcopter.