Percepto’s AIM 2022 Update Brings a New Drone and Advanced AI-Powered Analytics to the Table

With 2022 approaching, Percepto has released 2022’s update to its Autonomous Inspection & Monitoring (AIM) platform, which includes a new drone and advanced AI-powered analytics.

Named as one of TIME’s 100 Best Inventions of 2021, Percepto AIM was introduced in November 2020 as a solution for remote, fully autonomous, asset monitoring, inspection, and compliance of industrial sites. The platform takes advantage of piloted drones, fixed cameras, ground robots, and additional sensors to detect risks earlier, enhance measurement accuracy, spot trends easily, and gain better situational awareness. One of its major selling points was the combination of the company’s Sparrow autonomous drone-in-a-box solution and Boston Dynamics’ Spot, the four-legged robot that looks like a dog that can easily walk around, climb stairs, open doors, throughout various industries, including construction, mining, oil & gas, utilities, and public safety.

“When we first launched Percepto AIM in November 2020, we set out to completely disrupt industrial sites’ visual inspections. Now in use on six continents across multiple Fortune 500 companies, we’ve seen first-hand how our growing client base is automating their visual inspections, and how clients are expanding their use of Percepto AIM into additional sites they have,” Percepto CEO and Co-founder Dor Abuhasira told Commercial UAV News. “The market response to this solution is meeting our expectations and beyond. Not only are customers and prospects seeing great value in this platform but it also recently made the TIME Best Inventions 2021 list and was named as an Edison Award Gold winner in the visual insights and conversion tools category.”

With this 2022 update, Percepto is enhancing the way data is collected and dealt with through AI-powered packaged solutions for sector-specific use cases, such as solar, mining, energy, oil & gas, and other industries, with the newly launched Insight Manager. The company took user experience, level of automation, and ease of implementation into consideration to develop this new tool, and, according to Abuhasira, there were three breakthroughs they achieved in visual data management, all addressing real pains associated with visual data inspection:

Additionally, Insight Manager completely changes workflows for those who were already using Percepto AIM before this new update, making it easier to inspect worksites and providing even more automated workflows.

“Previously, a user would program a mission, selecting the drone or robot they would like to dispatch to inspect a specific asset,” Abuhasira explained. “With Insight Manager, users select the industry-specific solution they’d like to use, e.g. “volumetric measurement,” and the asset or assets on site they would like to inspect. Then AIM schedules the inspection, choosing which robot, drone, or sensor will collect the visual data, determining when and how frequently it should occur. The user automatically receives a report with insights after the inspection, and any detected urgent faults generate alerts to relevant stakeholders.”

Rebranded as Percepto Air Max, the next-generation of Percepto Sparrow drone is a field-proven solution that operates in the largest mining, oil & gas, and energy companies on six continents. Alongside Air Max, Percepto also launched Air Mobile, a new, more compact, cost-effective, and lighter-weight model designed for linear inspections, such as power lines and pipelines, and to monitor short-term projects across multiple sites. 

Even though both drones carry the same software capabilities when integrated into Percepto AIM, the Air Mobile’s Percepto base is physically lighter and smaller compared to the one for Air Max, meaning it can be easily deployed on a truck bed or moved from site to site. This makes the Air Mobile model ideal for smaller sites or organizations taking their first steps with a drone-in-box program, or larger sites that need greater deployment flexibility. On the other hand, the Air Max includes more advanced payload options, such as Optical Gas Imaging (OGI), and is designed to inspect and map complex industrial environments where the highest accuracy and durability are critical.

Both drones are safe and regulation-ready, and ensure all operational aspects meet corporate standards. Furthermore, their encasements are designed for infrequent maintenance and protection against extreme environmental phenomena, such as hurricanes.

“Percepto AIM 2022 and the new Percepto Air line of drones, together with the most advanced change detection solution, alert and prevent failures and downtime within diverse use cases across many industries,” said Percepto CEO Dor Abuhasira. “Percepto AIM provides the most advanced and comprehensive enterprise inspection software that offers a complete data workflow - from capture to insight. With Percepto Air Max and Percepto Air Mobile, companies have a range of options to choose from depending on the size of their facilities and the flexibility needed to deploy drones.”

“The real power of Percepto’s system is how data collection and analytics are integrated for a holistic view from both a technical and management perspective,” said Tim Shanfelt, Director of Operations Transformation, Koch Ag and Energy. “Our workers are connected to high-level information that helps them make the right decisions while keeping them safe and free to pursue higher-value activities. Our goal is to eliminate hazardous, wasteful, and mundane tasks from our operators' day. For example, instead of an employee climbing an icy ladder in the winter, a robot or drone can perform the same task while still obtaining accurate measurements. We see Percepto playing a significant role in helping make our facilities more safe, secure, efficient, and profitable.”

Since Percepto AIM’s release, one thing that surprised the company was “the level of interest in our construction monitoring use case,” Abuhasira stated. “We initially developed our change detection platform to detect faults with the goal of preventing small faults such as leaks and cracks from becoming massive disasters. Our change detection solution also detects positive changes to monitor construction progress. This is immensely valuable to our clients, who can now receive daily, accurate and unbiased reporting on any construction project at any of their facilities. For a company constructing one or multiple facilities, they have a tool to effectively manage contractors, timelines, and budgets”.

Today, Percepto held a livestream event where Abuhasira and his team walked through the new offering and demo some of the new capabilities. Going forward, Percepto’s CEO said that we can “definitely expect AIM 2023 to include even more industry-specific packaged solutions”, and the company is “constantly looking to improve our change detection framework and user experience. On the hardware front, we also have some ideas in mind that we will share in due course.”