Perceptiv Labs Lands Version One Ventures Investment for Drone Technology
Version One Ventures announced today that they have made an investment in Waterloo drone technology startup Perceptiv Labs. The financing round totaled $500k and included angel investors.
Perceptiv Labs is using computer vision to make drones more intelligent and fully autonomous.
Founded by University of Waterloo alumni Neil Mathew, P.J. Mukherjee, and Yan Ma, Perceptiv Labs is currently a part of the winter batch of Y Combinator.
Imaging, delivery and manufacturing are increasingly becoming automated with the use of robots and drones. According to Forbes, the current global non-military drone market is already $2.5 billion annually and is expected to hit $10 billion by 2024.
But the problem with this market is that drones currently cannot fly on their own and need constant piloting. They are hard to control and crash easily. And that’s where Perceptiv Labs comes in.
Their computer vision platform enables fully autonomous motion in a dynamic environment. In other words, they can provide the “brain” for every commercial drone. Their product can integrate with any existing drone, giving it the ability to: search, detect, and track objects; localize outdoors/indoors without GPS; and avoid collisions with obstacles.
Perceptiv Labs is currently focused on the film industry, with a number of pilot projects already underway with top studios. They have also launched a pre-order campaign for their entry-level filmmakers toolkit, the Perceptiv SHIFT.
