Inspections
Detect provides an AI-powered utility asset inspection platform that helps transmission and distribution utilities identify, manage, and track infrastructure defects before they cause outages. DetectOS processes visual data from any camera source—drones, trucks, or smartphones—and every finding is verified by certified specialists before becoming a work order. The platform is built around individual assets, maintaining a complete history of each structure across every inspection cycle.
- Artificial Intelligence
- Data & Analytics
- Drones & Uncrewed Systems
- Energy
- Enterprise Software
- Industrial Automation
- Software Only
- Utilities
Funding
Founders
Product
Problem
Transmission and distribution utilities face aging infrastructure, with 70% of transmission structures past their designed lifespan, while climate-driven outages have increased by 80% over the last decade. Traditional inspection methods rely on manual processes that produce inconsistent data quality, slow turnaround times measured in months, and unreliable GPS coordinates that send crews to the wrong structures. A severe labor crisis—with nearly 50% of the utility workforce retiring within a decade—further compounds the challenge of maintaining grid reliability.
Solution
Detect provides DetectOS, an AI-powered utility asset inspection platform that transforms any visual data—drone footage, truck-mounted cameras, or smartphone photos—into verified, risk-ranked work orders. The platform automatically maps images to correct structures, validates image quality in real time, and flags poor-quality captures while crews are still on-site. After AI screens the volume, certified specialists manually review every detection, ensuring accuracy before findings are exported to existing enterprise asset management systems. DetectOS is organized around the asset rather than the inspection job, maintaining one record per structure across every inspection, with health scores accompanied by data-confidence figures that honestly indicate when information is unknown. The platform supports a circular maintenance cycle where each inspection improves the next, enabling utilities to move from reactive to predictive maintenance.
Target Audience
Primary customers are transmission and distribution utilities, as well as drone service providers and contractors who need scalable, reliable inspection analysis for grid infrastructure. The platform serves organizations managing transmission corridors, distribution networks, and substations that require frequent, quantitative assessments of asset condition.
Features
- Automated photo association using machine learning that maps images to correct structure IDs even when GPS coordinates are incorrect or structures are closely spaced
- Orientation tracking that identifies component position and viewing angle across multi-phase towers and complex structures
- Real-time quality assurance that flags blurry, pixelated, or incomplete images while crews are still mobile
- Asset-centric data model with one record per structure spanning all inspections, including photo history, defects, and repairs over time
- Server-side ingestion pipeline with per-image processing records, allowing operators to see exactly where images are in the workflow and retry failed stages without engineering support
- Data-confidence scoring displayed alongside every health score, with unknown conditions shown as grey rather than green
- Integration with ArcGIS, Maximo, SAP, and Esri workflows so findings flow directly into existing systems without manual exports or duplicate data entry
- Per-asset shot sheets that define complete capture standards, ensuring every inspection cycle shoots the same way for consistent comparison