Members of the UplinkRobotics team celebrate the Spirit of Wyoming Award at the company’s award party May 18. Pictured, from left, are Lily Trujillo, Sean Watts, Victoria Smale, Brady Wagstaff, Josh Roper, Max Lamb, Isaac Ohlson and Muhammad Mujahid Iqbal. (Tyler Schanck Photo)
When then-University of Wyoming engineering students Christian Bitzas, Oreoluwa Babatunde
and Brady Wagstaff noticed a lack of local tech opportunities in Laramie, they decided
to build something themselves.
An idea sparked when Bitzas’s father, a home inspector, needed a safe way to check
out tight crawl spaces. While options existed in the inspection vehicle field, the
team was confident it could build something better.
With help from Zoë Worthen, a UW business management graduate student from Rozet,
the first prototype quickly turned into UplinkRobotics, a startup based in Laramie.
The company won the John P. Ellbogen $50K Entrepreneurship Competition in 2022 and
graduated from UW’s IMPACT 307 business incubator in 2025.
Today, the company manufactures smart, compact inspection drones capable of taking
high-definition pictures and sending back live video. These crawlers let home inspectors,
contractors and first responders easily see into dangerous, hard-to-reach areas without
putting themselves at risk.
As a result of its innovation, UplinkRobotics received the Spirit of Wyoming award
this month from the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Wyoming District Office.
The award was given for the company’s spirit of toughness, perseverance, community
service and local presence.
“Receiving the Spirit of Wyoming award reflects what we’re working toward every day:
building a sustainable technology and manufacturing company right here in our state,”
says Brady Wagstaff, CEO, co-founder and head of engineering at UpLinkRobotics. “One
of our core goals is keeping Wyoming talent in Wyoming, in jobs they’re proud of.
This community made UplinkRobotics possible, and giving back will always be part of
who we are.”
Proving that you don’t need to live in a massive tech hub to create world-class technology,
the company is making tough jobs safer; helping the local economy; and building a
tech community in Wyoming.
UplinkRobotics is about more than just great inspection tools. The company also is
focused on giving back. By partnering with UW, creating paid student internships and
mentoring youth 4-H robotics clubs, the company is helping to grow the next generation
of local engineers.
Wagstaff, of Evanston, and Bitzas, of Powell, each received their bachelor’s degrees
in computer engineering in 2022 and their master’s degrees in electrical engineering
in 2023, respectively, from UW. Babatunde, of Nigeria, earned his bachelor’s degree
in computer engineering from UW in 2022, while Worthen received her MBA in 2023.
To view a related video about UplinkRobotics, and to learn about some of the assistance the company has received from Wyoming economic development groups -- including the Wyoming Small Business Development Center Network, APEX Accelerator and Wyoming Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer Initiative Innovation Funding programs -- see below.
