Industrial drone developer Percepto has raised an impressive $45 million in Series B Funding Round and integrates with Boston Dynamics’ Spot as drone investment is soaring and several new companies are entering the drone market, with a mixture of traditional aerospace knowledge and a contemporary technological perspective. Over $1.8 billion has been invested so far and it is continuing to grow.
Koch Disruptive Technologies led the Series B funding round to launch “a transformative solution for remote, fully autonomous, asset monitoring, inspection and compliance of industrial sites.”*
Percepto is a developer of autonomous drone technology for inspection and surveillance. Drones have the potential to disrupt/replace/change multi-billion dollar industries including energy, security, insurance, agriculture, and more. Although drones completely change the way inspection, measurement, surveillance, and deliveries are done at this time, the main barrier that keeps them from becoming an essential — must-have — platform is the ability of drones to perform tasks autonomously.
Percepto is the ideal company to make a large investment in since they are already at the forefront of redefining how industrial sites and critical infrastructure are holistically inspected and monitored, harnessing remote robotics to autonomously collect, aggregate, and analyze visual data.
Because autonomy is such a key to disruption in the industrial industries, what Koch Disruptive Technologies did by leading the Series B funding round is extremely important, for it launches, as a press release stated, “a transformative solution for remote, fully autonomous, asset monitoring, inspection and compliance of industrial sites.”*
Dor Abuhasira, CEO and founder, points out the following:
“Our customers, which include some of the world’s leading utility, oil & gas sites, mining and other critical infrastructure facilities, are eager to fully embrace automation across their operations and reap the benefits of driving efficiency, reducing costs and safeguarding staff.”*
Percepto is now working with Boston Dynamics and has integrated its Spot robots with their Sparrow drones, with the aim being better infrastructure assessments, and potentially more as Spot’s agility improves.
Drone in a Box
Percepto presents their product as a “drone-in-a-box” solution. A “drone-in-a-box” solution means partly that those who buy it have little work to do to set it up, but it also refers to how it works — its drones leave the box and fly to collect data, and then return to the box to recharge and transfer more data, alongside that information that is picked up in real time.
The drones themselves operate on an on-demand basis — they fly in part for regular monitoring to detect changes that could point to issues that need to be dealt with and they can also be launched to collect data as a result of information requested by engineers. This product is then marketed by Percepto as “AIM,” that is, autonomous site inspection and monitoring.
With the platform, an operator is able to request data and Percepto AIM will deploy the most suitable drone that can independently stream the information requested. The platform also reports to assess risk, minimize downtime, drive efficiency and reduce operational costs without human intervention.
The platform includes the autonomous, weatherproof Sparrow drone, which is equipped with UHD (4k) RGB and thermal cameras. In addition, it includes Percepto Base — a base station for recharging and sheltering the aircraft — and PerceptoCore, comprehensive data management and analytics software.
Along with VC investors State of Mind Ventures, are Atento Capital, Summit Peak Investments and Delek-US. Previous investors U.S. Venture Partners, Spider Capital and Arkin Holdings also participated. Israel-based Percepto has now raised $72.5 million since it was founded in 2014, and it’s not disclosing its valuation, but Abuhasira, described it as “a very good round.”Abuhasira added in an interview, “It gives us the ability to create a category leader.*
Percepto has customers in around 10 countries, including ENEL, Florida Power and Light and Verizon.
Future
Koch Disruptive Technologies that led the funding for Percepto enabled it to launch a transformative solution for remote, fully autonomous, asset monitoring, inspection and compliance of industrial sites.
This large funding and partnership provides a picture of the future — how the drone industry will look in years to come — autonomous drones.
Fully autonomous drones will launch tremendous growth in the drone industry!
