Percepto gets investment to deliver autonomous inspection of industrial sites

Nov. 25, 2020
Debuts Boston Dynamics’ Spot as the first robot to be integrated with AIM alongside Percepto’s Sparrow Drone

MODI'IN, Israel - Percepto announced a strategic investment of $45 million in Series B funding led by Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT) to launch a  solution for remote, fully autonomous, asset monitoring, inspection and compliance of industrial sites. KDT is joined by new investors State of Mind Ventures, Atento Capital, Summit Peak Investments, Delek-US and existing investors U.S. Venture Partners, Spider Capital and Arkin Holdings, bringing the total investment in the company to $72.5 million.

Percepto’s Autonomous Inspection & Monitoring (AIM) platform sets a new standard for how critical infrastructure and assets are monitored, end-to-end, paving the way for the remote operations center of the future. Operating a fleet of third-party robots alongside their autonomous Sparrow drone, Percepto AIM provides visual data management and analysis to report trends and anomalies and to alert of risks. Any member of staff can request data and Percepto AIM will deploy the most suitable robot independently without human accompaniment to retrieve and stream the required data. The platform also seamlessly reports to assess risk, minimize downtime, drive efficiency and reduce operational costs without human intervention.

Spot is an agile mobile robot developed by Boston Dynamics that navigates terrain with unprecedented mobility. Percepto has integrated Spot with AIM for the robot to automate inspection rounds completely controlled remotely via the platform. Spot carries Percepto’s payloads for high resolution imaging and thermal vision to detect issues including hot spots on machines or electrical conductors, water and steam leaks around plants and equipment with degraded performance, with the data relayed via AIM.

“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.”

ICL Dead Sea, a leading global specialty potash, mineral and chemicals company, has been operating Percepto’s drone-in-a-box solution to carry out inspection, safety and security missions at its operations at the Dead Sea site, and were the first to fly beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) in Israel.

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