In conjunction with their exciting public launch today, we’re happy to announce our newest investment in Perceptiv Labs, a startup that’s using computer vision to make drones more intelligent and fully autonomous.

Imaging, delivery and manufacturing are increasingly becoming automated with the use of robots and drones. The current global non-military drone market is already at $2.5B, and is expected to hit $10B by 2024 (according to Forbes) with applications in agriculture, film production, package delivery, farming, security/search and rescue, and infrastructure inspection.

The problem, however, is that drones currently cannot fly on their own (they need constant piloting). They are hard to control and crash easily.

That’s where Perceptiv Labs comes in. Their computer vision platform enables fully autonomous motion in a dynamic environment. In other words, they can provide the “brain” for every commercial drone. Their product can integrate with any existing drone, giving it the ability to:  search, detect, and track objects; localize outdoors/indoors without GPS; and avoid collisions with obstacles. Just check out the awesome demo video below to get a better idea!

The company is currently focused on the film industry, with a number of pilot projects already underway with top studios. They have also launched a pre-order campaign for their entry-level filmmakers toolkit, the Perceptiv SHIFT.

In addition to this cool technology, there’s an impressive team at the helm of Perceptiv Labs. While Neil Mathew, P.J. Mukherjee, and Yan Ma are all first-time entrepreneurs, they have been working on computer vision since studying mechatronics and robotics at the University of Waterloo. The team is currently a part of the Creative Destruction Lab in Toronto and the winter batch of Y Combinator.

We are thrilled to be helping this team build out their platform and are so excited for the possibilities. To learn more, visit http://perceptivlabs.com/ and follow @perceptivlabs on Twitter.

http://youtu.be/7rCkB8Dg_Zs