DefendEye, Pants for Birds, and Skyline Nav AI have been named the three winners of the annual “Pitch the Press” competition at Commercial UAV Expo, the leading international trade show and conference focused on commercial drone technology. 

Each year, Commercial UAV Expo hosts “Pitch the Press,” a unique opportunity for exhibitors to present their products to a group of editors and reporters looking for the unique new technology being showcased at Commercial UAV Expo. Fifteen exhibitors were selected from a large pool of applicants to share their latest product or service during the one-hour event. Each exhibitor gave a two-minute elevator pitch to members of the media, followed by a short Q&A. 

John McNelly, Pants for Birds

This year’s judges included Nathan Roe of Lidar News and Scott Howe of Commercial UAV News. These judges listened to two-minute pitches from company representatives. They then evaluated the presentations, looking for innovation and potential for ROI, to select the top three.  

The 2025 winners are: 

  • DefendEye 
  • Pants for Birds 
  • Skyline Nav AI 

The judges were impressed by Pants for Birds’ ADSBee 1090 series of open-source embedded ADS-B receivers. These low-cost, highly adaptable units, they felt, could be useful in a wide variety of applications involving aircraft and drone detection. Similarly, the judges felt that DefendEye’s small, tube-launched drone system could improve the speed and effectiveness of many public safety and law enforcement operations, and they saw Skyline Nav AI, with its focused public safety mission, as an important addition to the uncrewed systems sector. 

"The winners of this year’s Pitch the Press presented innovative business concepts with clearly defined applications and use cases,” Roe said. 
Kanwar Singh, Skyline Nav AI

"The creativity and ingenuity in all of these solutions is incredible,” said Carla Lauter, Content Manager for Geo Week News, who served as the moderator for the event. “The winners represent some true out-of-the-box thinking and are bringing drone technology to more applications and industries than previously possible." 

Below is a complete list of companies that took part in Pitch the Press: