Month: June 2022

Indoor Robotics’ Tando™ drone fleet monitors autonomously MedOne’s data centers for safety and security purposes

27 June 2022

Indoor Robotics’ Tando™ system will send alerts on failures such as fires, intrusion of unauthorized visitors, temperature changes, etc.

MedOne, Israel’s largest data center hub providing comprehensive hosting services and public cloud services, has implemented Indoor Robotics’ Tando™ system at its biggest server farm in Israel for the purpose of improving security and safety. Tando™ by Indoor Robotics, a first-of-its-kind solution, is a fully autonomous indoor drone fleet that independently performs safety and security inspection missions inside buildings anywhere, anytime. In the future, MedOne intends to assimilate the technology into the rest of its facilities across the country.

The Tando™ system conducts ongoing inspection rounds throughout the night and on weekends. Tando scans the complex to detect any changes, malfunctions, or leaks, and monitors the temperature to ensure the integrity and ongoing operation of the site.

The system operates autonomously, according to the tasks defined by MedOne. The drones patrol the premises at set times, collect information and reports to the safety and security manager if an unusual activity is detected (e.g., identification of a person while the space is supposed to be empty, leakage, temperature change, door left open).

The system can be activated proactively to check an alert coming from other systems such as smoke sensors, access controls or motion sensors. It is a simple system to operate, without a need for special training. The operator indicates which area on the map they want monitored and which information they want collected, and the system determines the most suitable drone for the mission while using the safest route to provide the information quickly. Information from the drone can be viewed in real time or after the mission is completed.

Ofir Bar-Levav, Chief Business Officer, Indoor Robotics: “We are pleased to partner with MedOne, a leader in its field. The management of the safety and security systems in data centers is critical to ensure the quality and protection of highly sensitive information. Tando™ will enable complete and ongoing monitoring of the facilities at all times.”

MedOne’s server farms are highly secured in underground complexes. They constitute a major communication hub of the State of Israel to the world since most of the communication traffic of the State of Israel passes through MedOne’s facilities.

Indoor Robotics Raises $18 Million in Series A to Revolutionize Building Monitoring and Security Practices

16 June 2022

Indoor Robotics’ Tando™, the world’s first commercially available indoor drone, enables enhanced building security and monitoring. “We combined human-like capabilities with AI tools to enable next-generation security and monitoring
Doron Ben David, co-founder, and CEO.

Indoor Robotics, an indoor drone technology company that recently launched Tando™ drone, announced the closing of a $18 million in series A funding. The round of funding was led by Pitango and included Target Global, European Innovation Council Fund, and Spider Capital. This round enables Indoor Robotics to boost product development and enable intelligent indoor security worldwide.

Developing an autonomous indoor security robot has challenged robotics designers for years. While some ground-based robots are commercially available, ordinary items like a chair or a step can prevent them from fully securing an area. Indoor Robotics’ Tando™ uses multiple sensors and proprietary algorithms to accurately map and navigate in any indoor space, allowing it to autonomously navigate above or around any items in its path, enabling it to secure and monitor large areas.

“We reimagined what a drone was capable of and combined human-like capabilities with AI tools to enable next-generation security and monitoring,” said Doron Ben David, co-founder, and CEO of Indoor Robotics. “Tando has already been deployed by the world’s leading enterprises and security monitoring companies and is making a tangible impact on safety and security.”

Tando™ docks on the ceiling and functions as a security camera when not in flight. In addition to office buildings, it is currently being used to secure and monitor warehouses, data centers, malls, and retail establishments by well-known enterprises.

These funds will enable Indoor Robotics to move into full production and develop its go-to-market strategy. “We seized the opportunity to increase our investment in Indoor Robotics following the successful launch of Tando™ and the team’s demonstrated ability to surpass critical milestones,” said Rami Kalish, managing partner at Pitango. “Indoor Robotics’ proven capabilities have generated exciting demand from the market, which the investors are excited to facilitate.”

In addition to security functions, Tando™ drives significant safety and operational improvements. It is capable of collecting thermal imaging data and environmental data, as well as recording temperatures of rooms and identifying leaks. It also enables preventive maintenance, identifying areas in buildings that require care.

Doron Ben David and Amit Moran founded Indoor Robotics in 2018. Ben David had left his role as CTO of Israel Aerospace Industries’ Space Division when he began to collaborate with Moran, former Head of Robotics Innovation at Intel. They set their attention to drones, looking for areas where they could outperform human beings. They recognized that drones were ideal for security, an industry that suffers from 300% employee turnover, is vulnerable to fatigue and human error, and pays minimum wage to guards tasked with protecting valuable assets.

The drone fits in line with the company’s mission to boost the quality of life by enabling a seamless, comfortable indoor experience through task-oriented robots.

How Automation Drives Digital Transformation in Asset Inspection

08 June 2022

Whether it’s one’s primary job or a necessary distraction from it, asset inspections certainly aren’t exciting or particularly interesting. The person tasked with walking around with a clipboard or tablet simply confirms that everything is, well, where it’s supposed to be, stable, safe, and undamaged. It’s not particularly stimulating work, and as a result, often not executed comprehensively and reliably.

The upshot? It’s considered an odious job for most people. It’s no wonder that when burdened with this chore, an employee in an office, data center, warehouse, or retail facility often doesn’t do an adequate job. For instance:

They don’t always stick to a frequent enough schedule, so assets can go missing, suffer damage, or be misplaced for long periods of time before being noticed.
They forget to or cannot inspect all areas, especially those that are remote or hard to reach.
They take superficial notes, often leaving out specific details that they consider insignificant.

The time has come: Asset inspection robots

Asset protection and inspection is yet another item in a long list of mundane, repetitive tasks today managed by humans that clearly benefits from AI-driven robotics. Robotic inspectors don’t suffer from boredom, distraction, or lack of consistent methodology as they work. And then there’s the issue of availability. Robots are always ready to “work” as they don’t need to eat, take vacation, sleep, get sick, or even visit the restroom.

Further, a flying robotic drone offers an additional key benefit: it can move in 3D space, able to survey areas behind obstacles or too high to be accessible from the ground.

How do robotic drones help with asset protection & inspection?

Let’s walk through the various benefits of leveraging drones for inspection automation using four illustrative examples:

A warehouse with three-story ceilings uses shelving reaching way beyond observability on the ground, with inventory stored on pallets reachable either by forklift (with or without a work stage platform extension) or rolling ladders that are cumbersome to move. For safety purposes (to prevent scenes like this), the shelving itself must be periodically inspected for damage and stability, all the way to its highest point. The benefit of the robotic drone: In just seconds, the drone can reach the very top of each shelf, confirm its structural integrity, and move on to the next. This same activity by a human inspector would take ten times the effort.

A data center can contain a massive quantity of expensive, mission-critical servers, electrical cabinets, communication equipment, and other hardware that must be kept secure and temperature controlled. It is virtually impossible to differentiate between the various components or spot aberrant temperatures. These inspections are necessary for insurance and SLA commitments but are certainly monotonous – a wasted use of a skilled employee’s time. The benefit of the robotic drone: Using AI, the drone “remembers” what equipment is assigned to each location and thus can instantly identify a stolen or relocated item. In addition, sensors can detect spikes in heat not visible to the human eye.

In a retail facility — both its customer-facing space and backroom halls and storage areas — tracking inventory movement (or theft) is an ongoing task. In addition, open windows can let in dust and rain, and plumbing leaks can damage goods being stored. The common weakness here is that when executing only periodic, superficial inspections, it’s often too late by the time a problem is discovered. The benefit of the robotic drone: By automating your asset inspection methodology, with frequent and thorough flights, you dramatically reduce the chances of a crisis escalating without warning.

Keeping records manually is never straightforward. In any type of asset inspection, simply working through a checklist or only noting obvious problems leaves open the possibility that an unnoticed issue may simply be unlogged — with no record of how far back the problem goes. Also, logs are terrific for recording what is seen, but often leave out what is not. If you discover that a crate of widgets is missing from your warehouse, the inspector may not have even noticed during his routine check — because there was (obviously!) nothing to see. Comprehensively tracking all activity along a timeline is only possible with an end-to-end method of visual recording. The benefit of the robotic drone: An inspection robot can save terabytes of information. Its camera captures everything it sees, in every area, each time or moves through an inspection. Even the smallest issue (“When did the forklift leave that dent? Who was on duty that day?”) can be tracked with a “time travel” back to the relevant footage.

As should be clear by now, cutting-edge asset inspection solutions essentially eliminate all the weaknesses of a human inspector or security guard. Replacing these employees with a more accurate and more cost-effective solution allows these employees to be deployed for more critical tasks.

And while these benefits apply to any automated robotic inspection approach, an airborne drone platform like the Tando™ dramatically improves results by removing the barrier of visual limitations of inspecting at eye level. Features like self-charging while hanging from ceiling-mounted TilesTM completes the picture, for a fully-automatic, set-and-forget platform.