Startup taking to the clouds in more ways than one

You could say that drone-data startup Clobotics has the wind at its back.

Former Microsoft China vice-president George Yan is the co-founder and CEO of Shanghai-based Clobotics, which combines the cloud and robotics, and it just received $5 million in seed funding after opening an R&D center in the Seattle area.

The company announced the financing on Monday, and it is led by venture capital firm GGV Capital, which has offices in China and in Silicon Valley.

Clobotics combines drone hardware integration and cloud-based data analytics to yield an "industrial grade service solution", its website says. The company will look to compete in an estimated $127 billion global market for the commercial application of drone technologies.

Clobotics said it is the first Chinese company to apply machine learning to industrial sectors, such as inspecting wind turbines.

The company, which plans to operate in the energy, mining, surveying, environmental monitoring and security industries, will use the seed funds to expand its engineering team.

The DDaaS (drone-data-as-a-service) method enables businesses to obtain a snapshot of their operations by providing data from hard-to-reach places.

For instance, the company provides a solution that automates wind turbine inspection in remote areas. The drones calculate an optimal route to fly around a turbine and take high-resolution photos of the blades. The data is then streamed to the (software) cloud, where cracks and other defects can be analyzed.

"With the drone data industry rapidly developing, we are assembling a world-class team of computer vision, machine learning, cloud platform and industrial drone engineers to innovate on these technologies to help the commercial sector increase productivity and reduce safety risks," Yan said in a statement.

Eighty-five percent of the R&D team members hold advanced degrees, and a third have PhDs. The company said it has one of the most technical teams in the Microsoft Accelerator program in Beijing.

"Clobotics is taking drone technology beyond simple image-capturing to developing real-world applications using machine learning and computer vision. It's exciting to be a part of this team as it uses science and engineering to solve commercial challenges in seemingly unrelated fields," Jenny Lee, managing partner of GGV Capital and a board member of Clobotics, said in the same statement.

The startup has 35 employees, including five at the R&D operation in Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered.

"We think we will double that size in the next 12 months," Yan told GeekWire.

China has installed 23 gigawatts of wind power, tops in the world, according to the Global Wind Report. (The report says the US was No. 2 with 8.2 gigawatts installed in 2016.)

"This is a $50 billion market and growing, and obviously China is No. 1," Yan told GeekWire. "It's not really the drone that's totally interesting, it's actually the data. If I can detect a crack on a wind turbine, I can detect a crack on a bridge. I can detect a crack on a tall building."

Contact the writer at williamhennelly@chinadailyusa.com