Voliro presents a drone platform with a number of readily built-in instruments constructed for various duties, together with its Pulsed Eddy Present (PEC) Sensor pictured above. | Supply: Voliro
Voliro, a Swiss aerial robotics developer, introduced final week an $11 million extension of its Collection A spherical, bringing the overall to $23 million. The corporate introduced the primary a part of the spherical in October.
Voliro mentioned the extra capital will assist it speed up the event and world deployment of its autonomous aerial inspection robots. It designed these robots to modernize infrastructure upkeep, improve industrial security, and tackle rising workforce shortages.
“Voliro’s know-how instantly addresses a trifecta of world wants: enhancing industrial resilience and security, enabling the local weather adaptation and vitality transition by higher sustaining property like wind farms, and assuaging extreme workforce shortages within the inspection subject. Our know-how represents a vital software to guard the constructed setting that all of us depend on,” mentioned Florian Gutzwiller, Voliro’s CEO.
The firm constructed its Voliro T platform on a patented tiltable-rotor design and outfitted it with interchangeable sensor payloads. Voliro mentioned its know-how presents a scalable, data-driven system for safer, extra sustainable operations.
Voliro’s Collection A extension noticed new participation from noa and the addition of a debt facility from UBS. The unique spherical was led by Cherry Ventures.
Inside Voliro’s know-how
Voliro designed its aerial robots to examine hard-to-reach infrastructure safely and effectively. This contains something from flare stacks and storage tanks to wind turbine blades and transmission towers, the corporate mentioned. The Voliro T platform permits asset homeowners throughout the vitality, chemical substances, and renewables sectors to detect points early and do proactive upkeep.
Within the fast-growing wind business, the place uptime is essential, Voliro claimed it permits 5 occasions sooner wind turbine lightning safety system (LPS) inspections with immediate insights. It additionally mentioned it’s chopping downtime and decreasing inspection prices by as much as 50%, all with out handbook entry.
Since its founding, Voliro has established a world footprint with over 40 prospects in 17 international locations, together with Chevron, Holcim, and Acuren. Performing over 100 contact inspections month-to-month, Voliro claimed it has confirmed success throughout complicated industrial environments.
“Giant-scale Industrial inspections are a large alternative for robotics and automation disruption. Each growing older and new property, whether or not industrial, vitality, or infrastructure associated, will profit from extra frequent, automated, dependable, and data-driven inspections,” Gregory Dewerpe, Founder and Managing Accomplice at noa.
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Voliro targets growing older infrastructures world wide
As industrial property age, failures in essential, hard-to-access buildings like flare stacks, storage tanks, chimneys, and towers have gotten extra frequent, dangerous, and expensive, Voliro mentioned. Investigations into main accidents over the previous decade repeatedly cite corrosion, wall thinning, or undetected fatigue as root causes. These are points which might be often missed as a result of conventional inspections are expensive, rare, and largely reactive.
Voliro asserts these figures usually are not anomalies. Research present that as much as 30% of main industrial accidents in Europe contain growing older infrastructure and integrity points. Globally, corrosion-related failures are estimated to price the economic system $2.5 trillion yearly, the corporate mentioned.
Conventional inspection strategies depend on scaffolding, rope entry, and shutdowns—approaches that introduce vital danger, delay essential diagnostics, and restrict how typically inspections will be carried out.
On the similar time, within the U.S., almost two-thirds of licensed NDT (non-destructive testing) professionals are over 40, reflecting a broader pattern seen throughout OECD international locations, the place a wave of retirements is accelerating on account of growing older populations. As skilled inspectors exit the workforce, industries face an pressing want for smarter know-how and instruments that cut back reliance on handbook entry.
