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Percepto secures $45M, led by Koch Disruptive Tech

Percepto of Israel, which focuses on the area of autonomous inspection by industrial robotics, on November 24 announced a strategic investment of US$45 million in Series B funding led by Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT). The funding will focus on what Percepto describes as the launch a transformative 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 US$72.5 million.

Evolving its drone-in-a-box solution, Percepto states its Autonomous Inspection & Monitoring (AIM) platform will change how critical infrastructure and assets are monitored, end-to-end, paving the way for the remote operations centre of the future.

Operating a fleet of third-party robots alongside its autonomous Sparrow drone, Percepto AIM provides visual data management and analysis to report trends and anomalies and to alert of risks. Percepto explains any staff member can request data and the AIM platform will deploy the most suitable robot independently without human accompaniment to retrieve and stream the required data. The company explains the platform also reports to assess risk, minimize downtime, drive efficiency and reduce operational costs without human intervention.

“Our customers, which include some of the world’s leading utility, oil and 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,” said Dor Abuhasira, CEO and Co-Founder Percepto. “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 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,” said Chase Koch, President of Koch Disruptive Technologies.

Spot is an agile mobile robot developed by Boston Dynamics that navigates terrain with unprecedented mobility. Percepto explains it 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.”