The 2026 Exyn User Summit brought together customers, partners, operators, and surveyors who use Nexys to accurately map some of the most demanding environments around the world. Two days of collaboration in Philadelphia produced sharper priorities, stronger partnerships, and a clear picture of where autonomous mapping goes from here.
Time to data was the dominant theme. Nearly every one of our customers and partners mentioned replacing terrestrial laser scanning with mobile mapping on some level, collapsing multi-day TLS captures into mere hours. Also the need for quickly post-processing captured data into an accurate, geo-referenced 3D model that can be imported into downstream software quickly and easily. These trends aren't changing anytime soon.
Underground mining operators pointed to drone deployment times clocked at mere minutes as a genuine operational advantage, and yet are still looking for ways to speed up survey times. When your scan window is a narrow stope access or a live refinery turnaround, every minute of setup is a minute of exposure. Nexys is closing that gap in ways that matter where it counts.
Partners from around the world also agreed that autonomy and surveying demos convert faster than specifications because reliability only becomes visible when the system is actually running. And for many potential customers, seeing autonomy working in action is the last major hurdle in believing in an autonomous future for their surveying workflows. During the summit we discussed starting a short-term trial program as a clear path to putting that confidence in front of a potential user.
We heard over and over again that Nexys is "extremely rugged." Heat, dust, vibration, daily abuse. The platform held up, producing accurate 3D models regardless of the working conditions. And when the platform does eventually reach a point of failure, our expanding ecosystem of partners is ready to tackle on-site repairs, or managing platform swaps to keep the work moving to prevent unnecessary downtime. That kind of field-validated confidence does not come from a data sheet, but from daily deployments in real-world use cases.
Many of our customers know that LiDAR data is great for autonomous navigation in GPS-denied areas. But as Nexys continues to expand into more industries and use cases, we've seen the uses for LiDAR data branch out into exciting new opportunities. Most interestingly, reflectivity has become one of the important data points for LiDAR information. Some of our mining customers even mentioned being able to use this data to calculate potential ore deposits. This kind of multi-use case workflow helps to increase the scope of Nexys into new areas of surveying throughout the mining industry, finding ways to add value within a single scan. 
As we continue to deploy autonomous robotics to heavy industries around the world, one of the last areas where surveyors are still in harm's way is actually when they're out deploying a robot just before a scan. The next logical step, and something we heard repeatedly from customers and partners during our summit, is to create a drone-in-a-box solution to keep robots protected in areas of interest ready to be deployed. 
Underground, this could mean a Nexys mounted onto a Spot in a box that can be regularly deployed in between shifts to map tunnels and drifts for convergence monitoring before returning home to base for recharging and data upload. Above-ground robots can be kept safe from weather in a box, which are then deployed for mapping inside an ore dome for volumetric calculations.
Some of our partners are even curious about Nexys being deployed from a drone in a box solution that can be mounted on the bed of a truck for easy deployment to monitor stopes underground. Imagine being able to monitor a drone flying and mapping inside of a stope from the front seat of your truck, that barely sounds like work!
The summit made clear that Nexys succeeds because of the network of amazing partners we have around it. Partners that are developing regional support programs, scanning-as-a-service offerings, and maintenance capabilities to extend the Nexys platform to customers who need the data without the capital commitment. That infrastructure amplifies everything Exyn builds and we're thrilled to continue expanding our partner ecosystem into new markets and territories.
At the end of the day, the 2026 Exyn User Summit was a resounding success. Bringing together a colossal meeting of the minds to collaboratively brainstorm the expansion of Nexys scanning and autonomous navigation into new and exciting markets.
The entire Exyn team is grateful for our amazing partners and customers who were able to join us in Philly for this first summit, and we look forward to continuing this tradition for many years to come.
