- Percepto — a company that is pioneering autonomous inspection by industrial robotics — announced recently that it raised $45 million in a Series B round of funding
Percepto — a company that is pioneering autonomous inspection by industrial robotics — announced recently that it raised $45 million in a Series B round of funding led by Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT) to launch a transformative solution for remote, fully autonomous, asset monitoring, inspection, and compliance of industrial sites. And 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. Including this round of funding, the company has raised a total of $72.5 million.
Percepto’s Autonomous Inspection & Monitoring (AIM) platform is setting a new standard for how critical infrastructure and assets are monitored end-to-end, thus paving the way for the remote operations center of the future. And 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 is able to 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. And 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.
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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“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. We’re excited to be the first to empower our customers with truly autonomous inspection and monitoring, driven by the management of multiple visual robotic data sources together with other visual sources including piloted drones, CCTV and mobile cameras, on site or remotely. We’re delighted that our investors have recognized the growing need in the market for autonomous inspection, which is in demand now more than ever.”
— Dor Abuhasira, CEO and Co-Founder Percepto
“We believe 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. 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.”
— Chase Koch, President of Koch Disruptive Technologies
“Combining Percepto’s Sparrow drone with Spot creates a unique solution for remote inspection. 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.”
— Michael Perry, VP of Business Development at Boston Dynamics
“With Percepto’s AIM, we can now live stream all of our missions and no longer have to be physically present on site to control decisions regarding maintenance and operations. Wherever we are, we know exactly what is happening on site. We are looking forward to examining the integration of additional robots such as Boston Dynamics’ Spot onto our site for holistic inspection capabilities beyond aerial inspection.”
— Shay Hen, ICL Dead Sea Drone Program Manager
