Pablo Air, a swarm artificial intelligence (AI) aviation and defense platform company, has appointed Shin Hyo-sang, a professor at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and a leading authority on unmanned aerial systems and drone swarm operations, as an outside director.
The appointment was approved at the company's 2026 annual general shareholders' meeting held at its Songdo headquarters on May 31, Pablo Air said Monday. Shin is expected to leverage his expertise to advance the company's core swarm AI technology and maximize the mission capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles applicable to various industries including defense.
Shin earned a master's degree in flight dynamics, guidance and control from KAIST's aerospace engineering department in 2006, and a doctorate in cooperative missile guidance from Cranfield University in the United Kingdom, a globally renowned institution in the aerospace field. In recognition of his achievements in core technologies for unmanned aerial systems and autonomous swarm operations, he served as a professor of guidance, navigation and control at Cranfield University's Autonomous Intelligent Systems Group from 2011. Since 2024, he has held a full professorship at KAIST's Cho Chun Shik Graduate School of Mobility and a concurrent professorship at Cranfield University.
Shin has led dozens of international projects in the fields of drone swarm control, mission autonomy, autonomous flight and intelligent systems. He has conducted joint research with world-leading defense and aerospace organizations including the U.S. Air Force (USAF), Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, the European Defence Agency (EDA), Selex ES, MBDA and Thales. He also carried out collaborative research with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in unmanned systems situational awareness. In Korea, he is recognized as a top authority in next-generation defense technology areas including manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) research with the Korea Research Institute for Defense Technology Planning and Advancement (KRIT), multi-unmanned vehicle cooperation, autonomous mission execution, distributed mission control and risk-based flight prediction.
Pablo Air plans to accelerate its research and development efforts by drawing on Shin's global network and defense technology expertise. "Pablo Air is evolving beyond a simple drone company into a 'platform' company that provides unmanned aerial vehicle solutions powered by swarm AI, and Professor Shin's joining brings us one step closer to realizing our technology vision," Kim Young-jun, chairman and founder of Pablo Air, said. "We will marshal company-wide capabilities to raise our profile as a world-class swarm technology specialist and create successful business cases in the global market."