Autonomous drone developer Percepto has snagged a financial bounty just in time for Thanksgiving—$45 million.

Koch Disruptive Technologies led the Series B funding round to launch “a transformative solution for remote, fully autonomous, asset monitoring, inspection and compliance of industrial sites.”

Along with VC investors State of Mind Ventures, Atento Capital, Summit Peak Investments, Delek-US and existing investors U.S. Venture Partners, Spider Capital and Arkin Holding, the total amount invested in the Israeli drone company now tops $72.5 million.

Drone in a Box

As a drone in a box solution, Percepto’s Autonomous Inspection & Monitoring (AIM) platform provides visual data management and analysis to report trends and anomalies and to alert operators of risks.

The platform includes the autonomous, weatherproof Sparrow drone equipped with UHD (4k) RGB and thermal cameras, as well as Percepto Base (a base station for recharging and sheltering the aircraft) and PerceptoCore, a suite of comprehensive data management and analytics software.

With the platform, an operator can request data and Percepto AIM will deploy the most suitable drone independently without human effort to stream the required data. The platform also seamlessly 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 & 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,” Percepto CEO Dor Abuhasira said.

See Spot Drone

Spot is an agile mobile robot developed by Boston Dynamics that navigates terrain with unprecedented mobility. Percepto has integrated its drone platform with Spot, a mobile, four-legged robot developed by Boston Dynamics that navigates terrain. 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.”

Earlier this year, market research firm Frost and Sullivan awarded Percepto with the 2020 Global Enabling Technology Leadership Award for its “best-in-class, end-to-end autonomous drone-in-a-box solution.”

Last year, Percepto trialed autonomous drones over SK Telecom’s 5G trial network in South Korea. In 2018, the company teamed up with port-security firm CERTUS Port Automation to provide a fleet of autonomous drones to protect maritime ports and terminals.