Percepto

Overview

Summary

A pioneer in autonomous drone technology, Percepto has revolutionized asset and infrastructure inspection as well as surveillance. They have made it easy for drone users and other stakeholders by providing autonomous drones and solutions to improve their operation.

The company is leading in redefining how industrial sites can be inspected and monitored holistically. Thus, they’re using remote robotics to autonomously collect, record, and analyze visual data.

Through their experience with Percepto Sparrow (the market’s most selling drone-in-the-box solution), they’ve introduced AIM (Autonomous Inspection and Monitoring). This is the first end-to-end autonomous inspection and monitoring plan. This solution provides a remote operation center that further aids to reduce operational costs, increase safety, drive efficiency, reduce downtime, and assess risks.

In a nutshell, Percepto offers three major products, including Percepto IAM, Drone-in-a-box, and integrated robots. They’re all geared towards keeping you on the top of your site.

Markets

Percepto works with major industries which include electric utilities, solar energy, oil and gas, ports and terminals, mining, and heavy industrial sites.

• Electric utilities: Improves utility inspection and reliability. They prevent outages by frequently and accurately inspecting critical infrastructure. The drone-in-a-box solution can send alerts and insights automatically.
• Solar energy: Enhances the construction, operations, and maintenance of solar farms. Autonomous inspections allow you to monitor equipment across the photovoltaic cycle.  The technology also provides AI-powered reports, insights, and alerts.
• Oil and gas: Reduction in refinery downtime due to extended inspections. As the autonomous systems are designed to detect leaks, failures and faults, hazards can be identified and addressed early. 
• Ports and terminals: Their AIM autonomous robots have machine vision capabilities that provide visual data to port & terminal workers all over the globe. Percepto drones and robots patrol the sea and coastal lines 24/7, conduct terminal vicinity routine inspections, and continuously monitor container lots.
• Mining: In mining, autonomous drones and robots offer automated inspections. They solve site safety, availability, and productivity problems. 
• Heavy industrial sites: Similarly to refineries, these systems allow companies to minimise downtime during inspections. 

The autonomous solutions offered by Percepto have won the trust of some large customers across six continents, including Verizon, Florida Power and Light, and ENEL. 

Additionally, the company has received several awards for their innovation, including the Edison Gold Award and Frost & Sullivan Global Enabling Technology Leadership Award.

Industry

Percepto provides fully autonomous drone site inspections and monitoring as a service, so their service would generally fall under Autonomous Drone Technology. However, for the purpose of categorising them against other companies on this website, I would classify them a Manufacturer, as they produce the aircraft and systems which allow for the service to exist.

They’re a one-stop shop for hardware engineering, software development, machine vision expertise, robotics aficionados, and industry professionalism services. They take pride in complementing skilled human labor with state-of-the-art robotics and software.

Country of Origin

Based in Israel, Perceto company’s headquarter offices are located in Dam Hamacabim 38, Modi’in, 7178604, Israel, and 10900 Stonelake Blvd Austin, TX 78759, USA. The Global Operation Center is based at 7201 Haverhill Business Pkwy Riviera Beach, FL 33407, USA.

Countries of Operations

Percepto operates in Israel, the United States of America, Asia, Europe, and Australia.

Age

Percepto was founded in the year 2014 so it is currently 9 years old.

Size

According to its LinkedIn page, the company has 174 employees. Percepto’s leadership is comprised of 11 members, and 4 of them are co-founders.

Founders/CEO

The co-founders are four as outlined below:

Dor Abuhasira

Dor is the CEO and co-founder. He’s an expert in the commercial robotics industry and zealous about autonomous technology. After Perceto’s foundation in 2014, Dor spearheaded the company’s tremendous growth, making the company the leader in the industrial autonomous drones market. The ‘autonomous inspection and monitoring solutions’ is the company’s new market category birthed by Dor’s vision.

Previously, Dor headed the hardware and technology department at a telecommunications company called ECI Telecom, where he led the company’s Gigabit Passive Optical Networks (GPON).

Dor is an honors graduate of Gurion University with a B.Sc. in Electrical engineering.

Ariel Avitan

Ariel is the Chief Commercial Officer and also a co-founder of Percepto. He is an experienced data expert with two decades of experience and has facilitated the company’s accelerated growth. 

Ariel was previously the VP of marketing and an associate at Sequoia-backed Signals, and also served at Frost & Sullivan, Europe, as the Head of Information Security before founding Percepto.

Being a graduate of Ben Gurion University with a B.Sc. in Computer Science, his most significant contribution to this company is his in-depth knowledge of heavy industrial site challenges.

Additionally, Ariel is extremely passionate about drones and robots that provide actionable and data-driven perceptions.

Sagi Blonder

Sagi is the Chief Technology Officer and a co-founder. He’s a data analytics developer and a visionary of autonomous systems.

At Percepto, he leads R&D and oversees essential innovation in data capture, analytics, and autonomous systems.

Before co-founding Percepto, Sagi worked at Freescale – a worldwide leading company in embedded processing solutions where he was in charge of planning and implementing verification software, algorithms, and optimizations.

Sagi is an honors graduate of Ben Gurion University with a B.Sc. in Physics and Electrical Engineering.

Raviv Raz

Raviv is the chief engineering officer and co-founder. He leads platform development at Percepto. Raviv worked as a pilot at Israel Air Force (IAF) before the start of Percepto. He flew some of the world’s most advanced aircraft with innovative airborne technologies.

Moreover, Raviv was a technical pioneer at Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) – one of the world-class drone manufacturing companies. His expertise in drones and drone-related mechanisms was given a boost, during his term as a flight test engineer.

Raviv is a graduate of Ben Gurion University with a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering.

Competitive Edge

Currently Percepto benefits from being an early mover in this space of Drone-in-a-box solutions. Even DJI recently released a competitor to this system in 2022, which demonstrates that there is a significant market for this technology. 

Although not necessarily the first mover, there are a number of factors that put Percepto in a good position. There are other companies in this space that were possibly ahead of their time, which was detrimental to their growth and acceptance. 

I think Percepto fortunately exists within the right time in the market with an overlap of regulatory flexibility, technological affordability and also market acceptance and willingness to trial. 

Aircraft

Air Max, Air Mobile, and Air Max OGI are the three drones manufactured by Pecepto. 

Percepto Air Max 

Air Max provides maximum performance and versatility. It’s fitted with 24MP RGB and radiometric thermal cameras. It can also be tailored to suit the specifications for inspection and mapping tasks by configuring its many lenses and detecting gas emission with its OGI.

Additionally, the Air Max is weatherproof allowing it to be on site 24/7/365 because it can withstand heavy rain, high wind, snow, and dust. The percepto AI system oversees the aircraft’s take-off, landing, and in-flight task management.

Furthermore, this aircraft  is certified by regulatory authorities across a number of countries including the United States where it is equipped with a FAA-compliant parachute. The parachute enhances safety and streamlines BVLOS approvals. 

Percepto Air Mobile

Air Mobile offers industrial-grade mobility and versatility. This makes it ideal for sites in need of a sturdy and light-weight drone-in-a-box solution that allows for easy set-up across multiple locations.

The Air Mobile unit provides day and night vision, with a 16MP RGB and a 30 Hz Flir thermal radiometric sensor. Like the other aircraft in the Percepto fleet, the Air Mobile also has an on-board AI system for autonomous navigation and flight control. 

The Air Mobile has a nominal operating temperature range of 5-113° F (-15-45° C) which increases its longevity and operational uptime throughout the year. 

The aircraft also can come with the additional parachute

Percepto Air Max OGI

Air Max OGI is an autonomous end-to-end gas detection drone. It provides an automated data collection service. Hence,  it takes full coverage of your site and continuously and persistently collects data from the facility. This drone enhances your site’s safety by minimizing manual inspections and automating emergency responses.

Air Max also maximizes productivity by reducing product loss and boosting decision-making. It minimizes overall costs by increasing inspection frequency and reducing overhead. Additionally, this drone reduces carbon footprints by detecting emissions instantly to comply with ESG requirements.

Technology

Percepto AIM software enables the drone to autonomously take off, execute its mission, and land safely for end-to-end remote inspection. The software changes the usual way of collecting and analyzing visual data.

Approval 

The drone company got approval from the Dutch civil aviation authority (ILT) under the new European drone regulations. The body approved them to operate drones Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS), on April 7, 2022.

Growth

The company started with about 50 employees in 2014 but the number has increased to 174 to date. 

The other side of growth in this company is in the funding. From its foundation in 2014 to 2019 Percepto managed to raise $27.5M. Currently, this figure has risen to $72.5M.

Additionally, the company has made regulatory milestones where it has been recognized by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). This body selected Percepto to take part in the new market-leading BVLOS Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC). FAA also added Percepto to the pioneer group of the process of  Gold standard’ FAA’s Type Certification (TC). 

 What’s more, the company has won several inspection-automation technology awards. 

Funding 

Percepto funding comes from 17 investors, with Delek Group and Stata of Mind Ventures joining the group recently. The company has managed to raise $72.5M in total from over 7 funding rounds. They received their latest funding of $45M on November 24, 2020.

Revenue

Among the early stage companies with below $100M revenue is Percepto. Their total funding currently stands at $72.5M. 

Website

https://percepto.co/

Social Stats

Below are the company’s social media links. Get to know more about Percepto. 

Facebook – 2,905 followers, 2,763 likes

LinkedIn – 16,263 followers 

Twitter – 1,985 followers

But wait, there’s more!

Percepto is only one of the major players in this evolving industry. Click here to check out our full list of companies leading the way!