A Philadelphia robotics company best known for mapping places where GPS signals can't reach is now part of a federal effort to find critical minerals buried underground. Exyn Technologies has joined the Oak Ridge-led MAP-POD project, selected under the U.S. Department of Energy's Mine of the Future initiative, contributing autonomous navigation technology designed to help robotic vehicles map mines and locate minerals without satellite positioning.
As reported by Metal Tech News, the Mine of the Future initiative is administered by the DOE's Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation and aims to improve domestic mining capabilities while reducing U.S. dependence on foreign mineral supply chains. MAP-POD — short for Mining Autonomous Platform for Prospecting and Ore Discovery — combines autonomous robotics, advanced sensing, and artificial intelligence to improve underground mapping and identify minerals in real time, with Oak Ridge National Laboratory leading the project. Exyn is expected to contribute its ExynAI-powered navigation technology for autonomous ground vehicles, which the company says allows robotic platforms to operate underground without GPS while maintaining accurate positioning over extended movements, limiting accumulated errors where satellite navigation and fixed reference points aren't available.
The funding behind the program traces back to a September 30 announcement, when Assistant Secretary of Energy Audrey Robertson unveiled $29.5 million in Mine of the Future awards, framing the initiative under President Trump's “Unleashing American Energy” executive order, according to Iowa Capital Dispatch. Officials at that announcement emphasized that the United States remains 90% to 100% dependent on foreign suppliers — predominantly China — for multiple critical mineral supply chains, including the rare earth elements, lithium, and cobalt that underpin energy storage and national security hardware.
How the Mapping Technology Works
MAP-POD's hyperspectral sensors and onboard AI are designed to map mines and identify mineral deposits in real time, and Exyn has reported that its navigation tech can cut scan times from roughly 40 minutes down to about 5 minutes per scan, per Market Chameleon. That kind of speed matters underground, where traditional manual surveying in GPS-denied environments has long been slow and hazardous for human crews.
Exyn traces that capability back to 2021, when the company says it achieved Level 4 autonomy for aerial drones — becoming, according to Exyn, the first company to do so — allowing robotic systems to explore underground independently, determine points of interest, and avoid obstacles. The technology has since advanced to what the company calls Level 4b autonomy, which it says enables distinguishing between different obstacles and accounting for their effects on navigation. Exyn deploys the tech for underground surveying, exploration, and mapping in mining operations, allowing operators to gather information from active workings, abandoned passages, and areas that are hazardous or difficult for conventional survey crews to reach.
Interim CEO Ben Williams, who also serves as chief operating officer, said Exyn's participation offers an opportunity to demonstrate ExynAI capabilities in a national laboratory-led DOE project. He said ExynAI was built for hazardous underground conditions without GPS, and that the MAP-POD project aligns with three pilot programs the company is running to automate digitization across industries — pilots he said could expand ExynAI into new commercial and government markets.
A Company in Transition
Exyn's selection for the federal project comes amid a period of significant change for the company. Exyn completed its initial public offering on Nasdaq under the symbol EXYN in May, raising approximately $19.4 million despite reporting an accumulated deficit of $75.9 million in SEC filings, as Hoodline previously reported.
Williams assumed leadership on August 19 following the resignation of former CEO Brandon Torres Declet amid an internal board investigation into $286,000 in unauthorized personal expense charges, according to Technical.ly. Williams previously served as Exyn's COO and completed two combat tours as a U.S. Navy officer before stepping into the top job. The same month, the company established a dedicated Defense Advisory Board chaired by director Gregory McNeal, part of a push to expand its autonomous mapping platform into military applications such as aircraft inspection for the U.S. Air Force, according to MyChesCo.
Headquartered at 2118 Washington Avenue in Philadelphia, Exyn manufactures modular hardware systems including its Exyn Nexys 3D mapping device alongside its proprietary ExynAI software stack. The company originated in 2014 as a spinout of the University of Pennsylvania's General Robotics, Automation, Sensing & Perception Laboratory, and has pursued further deployments in defense, infrastructure, and other industrial environments beyond mining.
Part of a Broader Federal Push
MAP-POD is one of 17 national laboratory research projects funded under the Mine of the Future awards, spread across 12 national laboratories in nine states, including Sandia, Los Alamos, Argonne, and Lawrence Berkeley, according to SME Mining Engineering Online. Among the other selected projects is Ames National Laboratory's $1.5 million MICRO-Vision effort, which uses magnetic-acoustic conditioning and computer vision to improve rare earth ore processing, as detailed by Shale Magazine.
The program has also funded field-testing infrastructure beyond the laboratories themselves. In September, the DOE separately awarded $19.3 million to Southern Methodist University to build a synthetic test mine in Navasota, Texas, for real-world validation of subterranean mining robotics — SMU's Synthetic Mine Deal that Hoodline covered last month. As with that project, MAP-POD's own funding amounts, scope, and timing remain subject to the completion of DOE award negotiations, meaning final terms between the agency, Oak Ridge, and Exyn have not yet been formalized.
Exyn has framed its role in MAP-POD as complementary to its three ongoing pilot programs and its broader ExynAI growth plans, betting that a federal mining showcase can help translate its underground mapping technology into new government and commercial contracts at a moment when Washington is treating mineral independence as a matter of national urgency.
