Energy Robotics, the leading AI software platform for autonomous inspection with robots and drones, has successfully raised a sum of $13.5m in Series A financing.
Led by Blue Bear Capital and Climate Investment (CI), the round saw further participation coming from the likes of Futury Capital, Hessen Capital, and more. Going by the available details, this funding will go towards accelerating the commercial deployment of Energy Robotics’ software in and around energy, chemicals, industrial, and security sectors.
More on the same would reveal how the cash injection in question also delivers the all-important validation to Energy Robotics’ track-record of completing over one million inspections across five continents. During this time, the company saved well over 32,000 hours worth of hazardous human labor for customers operating across oil and gas, industrial, chemical, and utility sectors, including Shell, BP, Repsol, BASF, Merck and E.ON.
To understand the significance of such a development, we must take into account how existing infrastructure and industrial facilities are currently up against two major challenges i.e. a shrinking skilled workforce and increasingly complex, aging equipment which demands specialized maintenance.
Against that, Energy Robotics brings forth a AI software platform for autonomous robots and drones to cut operating costs by up to 40%, while simultaneously enhancing worker safety.
“This funding round will help us scale autonomy to serve the world’s most critical infrastructure, giving energy, chemicals, utilities, and security operators greater resilience, safety, and efficiency,” said Marc Dassler, CEO and co-founder of Energy Robotics. “As a skilled workforce retires, critical infrastructure operators face a significant demographic shift. This is compounded by the fact that many of the world’s most vital energy and chemical assets are decades old, requiring more frequent and intricate monitoring, inspection, and maintenance. Our platform provides a timely and scalable solution, enabling customers to not only maintain but also improve operational efficiency and safety.”
Talk about the company’s platform on a slightly deeper level, we begin from the promise of a hardware-agnostic operating system. This translates to how the platform seamlessly integrates with 8 leading robots and drones and OEM hardware manufacturers (e.g., Boston Dynamics, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, DJI) so to help customers build mixed fleets without vendor lock-in.
Next up, we have AI-powered analytics library coming into play, capable interpreting multimodal sensor data, from gauge readings to leak detection, continuously learning, and therefore, improving with every mission.
Another detail worth a mention is rooted in a facility to ensure simple and LLM-driven mission control. You see, an integrated large language model system is deployed here to empower operators in the context of simply prompting the platform to generate and execute inspection tasks across entire fleets of robots and drones.
Markedly enough, fleet orchestration and autonomous operations are also based on millions of data points that, on their part, come from complex, dynamic real-world facilities, such as refineries and power plants.
Hold on, we still have a couple of bits left to unpack, considering we haven’t yet touched upon the ways in which each inspection mission automatically updates a live, evolving digital replica of facilities so to provide real-time visibility and predictive insights that feed directly into customer ERP, CMMS, and digital twin platforms.
Rounding up highlights would be an aspect committed to data privacy and security. In essence, the underlying platform delivers a solution archetype which keeps sensitive inspection data within customer-controlled IT systems, as well as free from vendor-specific software platforms.
“The global energy transition relies on a more resilient, efficient, and secure infrastructure,” said Dr. Carolin Funk, Partner at Blue Bear Capital. “Energy Robotics’ autonomous inspection platform, powered by AI, directly addresses this need. It provides a scalable solution that improves the safety and operational efficiency of key energy and industrial assets, while taking advantage of the global robotics expansion.”
