Dronefund invest in CivDrone

DRONE FUND announces that DRONE FUND II （Official name; Chiba Dojo Drone Fund II Investment Limited Partnership）, managed by Kotaro Chiba and Soki Ohmae in Tokyo, Japan, has invested in CivDrone ltd. （hereinafter CivDrone）, led by Tom Yeshurun and Liav Muler of Tel Aviv, Israel.

While drones seek new markets and social implementations on a daily basis, they continue to gain credibility even in the existing traditional industrial areas.

CivDrone, an Israeli drone startup, has pioneered the performance and potential of drones in the construction and civil engineering arena by revolutionizing land surveying and GIS technology.

This time, we were able to interview Tom, who is also the co-founder of Shiv Drone, about the technology under development and its innovative solutions in detail.

Civ Drone Solution
Tom CEO (Omitted): Shiv Drone is a construction and civil engineering robotics startup that is trying to automate ground marking/survey by leveraging AI, robotics and drone technology.

For example, in the past, at construction sites, we had to dispatch a specialized team to walk around the site and manually drive hundreds of piles daily (marking). But with our solution, customers will be able to hit as many stakes as they want to hit as many points with the push of a button.

The drone is coded based on the blueprint, flies to the desired coordinates, and drives the pile while rotating it to the ground with an accuracy of 1-2 cm. While surveyors and others spend their time on more important tasks, drones can take on this heavy labor instead.”

What are your needs and use cases?
Thanks to the application of robotics and automation, the Shiv Drone solution is able to perform these hard-working tasks accurately within a 1-2 cm accuracy range. In the future, we aim to provide a solution in which customers can simply monitor the work by leaving it to an autonomous system that handles these tasks. We position our company as a one-stop shop for robotics at construction and civil engineering sites, and we would like to use this as a foothold to expand the market to various areas.

What do you think about the social acceptability of drones?
During the COVID-19 epidemic, drones’ social acceptance increased significantly. People around the world, as well as those who are familiar with the industry, are now recognizing the potential of drones to support our daily lives.

The construction/civil engineering and infrastructure markets are highly compatible with drones and have a proven track record of benefiting from this technology. For drone operators already in the field, our technology should be a huge boost in improving their performance.

What are the benefits of Shiv drone technology to society?
By shortening the critical path (*1), downtime (*2) at the site can be shortened and construction time can be shortened. You can reduce on-site work delays by eliminating marking/pile-making mistakes that can lead to unnecessary increases in on-site work and construction site waste.

Another way to look at it is that working at construction and civil engineering sites is not always easy, and many of them involve danger. Every year, we hear about people who died in a field accident, but the most common cases are bites and falls of snakes, and heavy machine accidents. By reducing the time spent in hazardous situations and reducing man-hours in the field, you ultimately reduce risk and save the lives and safety of your workers.

*1: A series of scheduled activities/tasks that determine the project period *2: The time during which
computer systems, network services, etc. are stopped due to maintenance or malfunctions.

Tell us about the vision of the Shiv drone The
possibilities are endless! (The sky’s the limits!)

Robotics, drones, and AI make our lives safer, easier, and simpler. Ci Shidrone will focus on industrial solutions in construction and civil engineering and will definitely aim to play a part in this movement.

What are the highlights of
2020 ? We are currently working on a ground vehicle that will work with the drone. We aim to not only provide our customers with more automated solutions, but also to reduce the time spent on hard-working tasks in the field so that highly specialized people can concentrate on their more important tasks. ..

Finally,
we look forward to a great year in providing automation services to our US, EU and Japanese customers!