Israeli drone maker Percepto announced on Tuesday that it will launch a “transformative solution” for remote, fully autonomous, asset monitoring, inspection, and compliance of industrial sites with a strategic investment of USD 45 million in Series B funding.
The round was led by Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), the venture capital arm of multinational Koch Industries. The VC was joined by new investors State of Mind Ventures, Atento Capital, Summit Peak Investments, Delek-US, as well as existing investors US Venture Partners, Spider Capital, and Arkin Holdings.
The company has raised a total of USD 72.5 million to date.
Percepto will partner with US robotics company Boston Dynamics to integrate its solution into the US firm’s robot, Spot. Spot is an agile mobile robot developed by Boston Dynamics that navigates terrain with unprecedented mobility, according to a statement from Percepto.
The solution was originally developed for Percepto’s Sparrow drone.
Founded in 2014, Percepto says it is evolving its advanced drone-in-a-box solution to the next level, using its Autonomous Inspecting and Monitoring (AIM) platform for its hardware and software. The company operates a fleet of third-party robots alongside its autonomous drone, Sparrow.
Percepto’s AIM platform provides visual data management and analysis to report trends and anomalies and to raise alerts. Any member of staff can request data, and Percepto AIM will deploy the most suitable robot without human accompaniment to retrieve and stream the required data. The platform also assesses risk, minimizes downtime, drives efficiency, and reduces operational costs without human intervention.
“Combining Percepto’s Sparrow drone with Spot creates a unique solution for remote inspection,” said Michael Perry, VP of business development at Boston Dynamics. “This partnership demonstrates the value of harnessing robotic collaborations and the insurmountable benefits to worker safety and cost savings that robotics can bring to industries that involve hazardous or remote work.”
“Percepto AIM addresses a multi-billion-dollar issue for numerous industries and will change the way manufacturing sites are managed in the IoT, Industry 4.0 era,” said Chase Koch, president of Koch Disruptive Technologies. “Percepto’s track record in autonomous technology and data analytics is impressive, and we believe it is uniquely positioned to deliver the remote operations center of the future. We look forward to partnering with the Percepto team to make this happen.”
This article first appeared in NoCamels, which covers innovations from Israel for a global audience.
