Skygauge Robotics (HAX 2019) has closed a $3.3 million CAD seed round led by BDC Capital’s Industrial Innovation Venture Fund with participation from RiSC Capital and follow-on from existing investors SOSV (through the HAX accelerator) and Hello Ventures.

“We formed Skygauge Robotics in 2016 when we noticed a lack of design innovation in the drone industry. Around the start of the decade, we were promised a very ambitious vision that drones would do any type of job, yet the industry is mostly composed of drones taking pictures and videos for data collection,” says the firm’s CEO Nikita Iliushkin. “We realized this stemmed from limitations with current designs. They were not stable enough to do more physical work and so we had to invent a new way for drones to fly.”

The Skygauge team, using a patented thrust-vectoring design, created a drone to maneuver with a full 6 degrees-of-freedom.

“Conventional drones struggle to interact with the world because they can’t direct the forces required for any kind of job. They can hover and fly well, but they can’t push, pull, or twist, making them unsuitable for physical work” says Chief Designer and Inventor, Linar Ismagilov.

Once the team successfully captures the inspection market, Skygauge has planned expansions into physical jobs like painting, spraying, pressure washing, drilling, paint removal, high-rise window washing, welding, and general construction.

The vision for the company is to create the ‘Workforce in the Sky’.

“Robotics is all about reducing human involvement in dull, dirty, and dangerous tasks” says Cyril Ebersweiler, HAX founder and Managing Director. “HAX invested when we saw the impact the Skygauge would have in these conventional industries.”

Falls from height are the number one cause of worker death from OSHA’s fatal four and Skygauge Robotics will eliminate these risks by keeping workers on the ground. Skygauge has experienced a surge in demand for their product during COVID-19 as worker safety and reducing time on-site have become paramount concerns for employers. Skygauge Robotics graduated from the HAX accelerator in 2019.

Skygauge Robotics is currently expanding the foundational team at their offices in the Toronto/Hamilton Area. “Using this funding we will go from our prototype to a commercial product and we’re hiring driven engineers to help us get there” mentions CTO Maksym Korol. If you are interested in learning more go to: https://skygauge.co/careers/