Changing the Offshore Wind Turbines Are Inspected

A new company pioneering the use of artificial intelligence in wind turbine inspection, Clobotics announced on 15 August 2018 that it has closed an additional $11 million (USD) in funding in a continuation of its Series A round of financing. Venture capital raised in this round now totals $21 million (USD). The company specializes in in intelligent computer vision solutions for the wind power industry.

It’s co-founder and CEO, George Yan, says that the timing is right to market services that ensure that wind turbines, including offshore facilities, are kept well-maintained.

Clobotics provides an end-to-end solution combining autonomous drone hardware with built-in computer vision, artificial intelligence and data analytics software for automated wind turbine inspections. Using Clobotics Smart Wind solution, autonomous drones take high resolution photos to identify damaged or weakened components as small as one millimeter by three millimeters. Clobotics’ AI engine parses its massive real-world dataset which includes fully-functional and minutely-damaged turbines and shares real-time telemetry to its customer cloud portal, completing an inspection in minutes rather than days.

The company says that its and autonomously-flown drones offer a more stable, higher resolution, more comprehensive, and more cost-effective solution to capture high quality images of the blades. With onboard AI technology, Clobotics Smart Wind can detect tiny cracks of the blades and filter the data by severity. It will track the blade damage over time and enable wind farms to further improve operational efficiency throughout the wind turbine life-cycle.

New investors include Nantian Infotech VC and Wangsu, joining previous investments from KTB Network, GGV Capital and Capital Development Investment Fund Management Co., Ltd. With the new capital, Clobotics will continue to expand its business in North America to further penetrate both the wind power and retail industries. The company will also invest in ongoing product development and continue to build its growing team of experts in computer vision, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.

The new funding builds on the momentum Clobotics has established over the past 21 months, during which time it has landed dozens of international customers and hired nearly 100 employees in its Seattle and Shanghai headquarters and offices throughout Asia. To learn more, click here.