RobotLAB Inc., which offers robots as a service, or RaaS, is now selling and servicing drones from Vision Aerial. The Bozeman, Mont.-based drone manufacturer is the first of its kind to join RobotLAB’s portfolio, which currently includes mobile robots for restaurants, hospitality, floor scrubbing, and sidewalk delivery.
Southlake, Texas-based RobotLAB has local franchises, with more than 18 sites across the U.S. With eight of Vision Aerial’s products, franchisees can now offer local support to service providers for optical gas imaging, solar inspection, mapping, construction, or crop surveying.
“So we offer multiple applications, multiple use cases,” said Elad Inbar, founder and CEO of RobotLAB. “So if you are a power station, you want to survey local hot areas, right? If they’re getting too hot, you want to be able to capture that. If you are in agriculture, you want to tell if your crops are healthy, if they are overwatered or underwatered.”
RobotLAB evaluated prospective partners
RobotLAB learned from its market research that there is a growing and maturing market for inspection drones, especially in gas leak detection, Inbar told The Robot Report.
“Customers have reached out to us and asking for [drones] for several years, but in all honesty, we didn’t see a good enough platform out there. And we tested many,” said Inbar.
The company considered multiple drone providers, and it has a stringent evaluation process for new technology partners, he explained.
“First, we have a very rigorous testing process, including some 50 points that we test,” Inbar said. “Everything from reliability to [whether] the spec matches reality, the types of payloads, the types of control, autonomy, etc. And we collected data from our customers, to understand what they wanted [from a drone].”
“If you need to identify gas leaks or radioactivity, all of these require specific payloads, a specific flight plan, and a specific collaboration between multiple solutions,” he added. “And we want to make sure that what we offer our customers actually delivers the value.”
“We eventually partnered with Vision Aerial because they have the solutions that can actually help us service the customers,” said Inbar. “They have the right footprint, the right size, the right types of payloads, the applications, and so on, that actually make them useful in the hands of our customers.”
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Vision Aerial offers configurable payloads
Vision Aerial has two platforms: the SwitchBlade-Elite Tricopter and the Vector Hexacopter. The larger Vector Hexacopter can lift payloads up to 5kg (11 lb.), with up to a 40-minute battery life and 20 km (12 mi.) range.
The company said its drones are designed to be easily configured with different payloads, including a variety of cameras and other sensors like infrared cameras or lidar sensors.
This reconfigurability was a major reason why RobotLab chose Vision Aerial to be its first drone partner. Vision Aerial is also one of the largest and most established U.S.-based drone manufacturers, which is key for many U.S. customers, noted Inbar.
Vision Aerial drones are currently deployed at campuses such as those of the University of California, Berkeley; Montana State University; the University of Washington; and Rutgers University. It has also partnered with the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, DTE Energy, and Marathon.
Supporting multiple payloads, the Switchblade tricopter can be used for a variety of industrial applications. | Credit: Vision Aerial
Franchisees can find localized opportunities
For entrepreneurs considering creating a robotics service provider (RSP), RobotLAB offers franchisees the tools and training to sell and support its RaaS portfolio.
For example, RobotLAB has a service agreement with Hilton Hotels to service all of its hospitality robots, said Inbar. Fulfillment of this service contract falls on the local RobotLAB franchisee, providing an instant income stream, he asserted.
Franchisees get exclusive access to a region, and it costs about $55,000 to reserve a locale block and a total investment of about $400,000 to get to revenue, according to Inbar. RobotLAB works with multiple hardware vendors on their behalf, somewhat like an integrator, he said.
RobotLAB launched its franchise model in May 2023 and has a goal of expanding to 100 cities by the end of 2025. It is actively recruiting new franchisee partners to expand its reach across both North and South America.
Editor’s note: Eugene Demaitre contributed to this article.
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