Henry Thorne is the founder of Aethon. Mr. Thorne has a valuable combination of talents-mechanical engineer, electrical engineer, graphic user interface designer and computer scientist. He is an internationally respected automation visionary who applies engineering rather than academic approaches to making automation work for business.

Upon graduation from Carnegie-Mellon University (BS 1982, MS 1984), Mr. Thorne joined General Motors Corporation. During his five years there, among his many accomplishments were the invention of the first weld path adjustment system (in use today on thousands of robotic welders); the invention of the first fully automatic tool center point calibration system (eliminated the single largest cause of downtime in automated arc welding); the design and implementation of the world's largest automated arc welding system (still running today with the lowest downtime in the auto industry); and the development of a spot weld controller (software installed on thousands of robotic welding machines).

In 1990, Mr. Thorne left GM and founded Cycle Time Corporation to design and market "Tophat," a graphic user interface for robotic welding. Tophat was sold to ABB and became a primary reason for ABB's market share growth in the US from 5% to 30%. Under contract to ALCOA, he also invented the first system for real time arc weld quality measurement, still the best available measurement of the quality of a weld as it is being produced. Further, Mr. Thorne invented and patented the world's leading system for calibrating robotic tools, still licensed to ABB. It is, indisputably, the most accurate and reliable means of measuring tool center points.

In 1997, Mr. Thorne formed the predecessor to Aethon Inc. It was here that he invented and patented three technologies that solve the "navigation riddle," without using elaborate and expensive laser and inertial guidance systems.