Our Innovation Analysts recently looked into emerging technologies and up-and-coming startups working on solutions for the construction sector. As there is a large number of startups working on a wide variety of solutions, we want to share our insights with you. This time, we are taking a look at 5 promising construction drone startups.
Heat Map: 5 Top Construction Drone Startups
Using our StartUs Insights Platform, covering 1.116.000+ startups & emerging companies, we looked at innovation in the field of construction. For this research, we identified 321 relevant solutions and picked 5 to showcase below. These companies were chosen based on a data-driven startup scouting approach, taking into account factors such as location, founding year, and technology among others. Depending on your specific criteria, the top picks might look entirely different.
The Global Startup Heat Map below highlights 5 startups & emerging companies developing drone solutions for construction. Moreover, the Heat Map reveals regions that observe a high startup activity and illustrates the geographic distribution of all 321 companies we analyzed for this specific topic.
TraceAir – Digital Topography
Drones have multiple applications in construction like asset tracking, monitoring, and structure inspection. Drones collect geospatial data to map construction sites, build 3D models, and integrate them into Computer-Aided Design (CAD) to help civil engineers develop improved plans. Advanced analytics also helps in reducing costs and increasing effective time utilizations.
The US-based startup TraceAir provides an integration platform, TraceAir, for construction-site operations. Irrespective of whether construction companies currently use drones, the startup offers drones to collect data and integrate it into TraceAir. The platform combines topographic information, site measurements, and other data collected by drones into any handheld device. As a result, civil engineers and construction supervisors have optimal visibility of the progress of construction in real-time.
Civdrone – Site Layout Planning
Engineering designs include roadways, sewers, electrical, and plumbing lines, and other components required for a holistic design. Traditionally, workers deploy stakes with the help of 2D plans, which sometimes causes errors leading to significant cost and delays in project completion. Whereas, drones deployed for staking a site cut down labor costs and ensures effective utilization of time with higher precision.
Israeli startup Cividrone provides solutions for land surveying using smart stakes. Drones help deploy stakes in the construction sites in line with the engineering designs. Smart stakes are embedded with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags that contain information regarding the depth of digging, in addition to other worker safety warnings. Moreover, this information is made readily accessible via handheld devices and improves worker safety.
Sentient Blue – Powertrains For Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)
Electric turbines that power drones limit flight time depending on the payload and distance. The use of microturbines or hybrid powertrains in drones significantly increases flight time and reduces emissions. Moreover, microturbines allow for siphoning the extra electricity to later store in batteries. This results in improved flight times and overall performance of UAVs.
Italian startup Sentient Blue is based out of the US and develops innovative powertrain solutions for drones and UAVs. The startup uses proprietary hybrid and standalone microturbine systems to generate electricity and power drones. Moreover, microturbines in combination with high-speed motor generator units (MGU) result in improved flight times and drone productivity.
Huviair – Computer Vision Enhanced Drones
Traditionally, construction projects spend a lot of time on planning, surveying, and execution that involves manpower and money. With the help of advanced analytics and computer vision, drones help organizations optimize all the planning stages in a construction project resulting in better productivity. This reduces costs and increases the accuracy of project timelines and, as a result, improves overall productivity.
Indian startup Huviair provides software solutions to improve construction productivity. They utilize drone data and a cloud-based productivity platform to help construction companies visualize, analyze, and optimize various construction stages. This enables construction projects to adhere to faster timelines, as well as reduce reworking.
Sees.ai – Remote Site Surveying
The first step of construction is to survey the land and gather all the necessary data points for design engineering. Using drones for aerial surveying is faster and more accurate. With advancements in UAV technology, such as Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS), infrastructure development, and construction, use drones equipped to fly BVLOS for orthophoto mapping and site-surveying.
British startup Sees.ai offers remote drone operation solutions to construction companies. The control room simulates a virtual reality (VR) environment on-site that enables pilots to navigate the drones remotely. As a result, this increases efficiency, on-site worker safety, and profitability.
What About The Other 316 Solutions?
While we believe data is key to creating insights it can be easy to be overwhelmed by it. Our ambition is to create a comprehensive overview and provide actionable innovation intelligence so you can achieve your goals faster. The 5 construction drone startups showcased above are promising examples out of 321 we analyzed for this article. To identify the most relevant solutions based on your specific criteria, get in touch.
