Creating a physical replica of our world is a feat science has yet to achieve, but we now have a CAD product that makes digital twins of a location, country, or continent – thanks to SenSat. To intensify its efforts and improve SenCAD, the SenSat team received 9.1M EUR from Tencent, an Asian AI company with similar goals.
SenSat is no stranger to the construction business. The team’s success with Mapp has solidified its reputation and influence in the construction industry. Mapp is a product that helps construction companies navigate their building sites via digital means. And the invention of SenCad is a step forward into the future of the Construction business.
Since we already have a product that makes the construction site easy to navigate, why do we need SenCAD?
The need for SenCAD
Though site surveyors are not essentially grouped as construction workers, their jobs are carried out in hazardous areas, such as – mountainous regions, mines, and busy highways. While working on the construction site, surveyors are often exposed to snakes, insects, distracted motorists, construction hazards, heat exhaustion and many more.
With the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles aka UAVs, SenCAD captures topographical CAD surveying data easily and swiftly. Besides speed and preciseness, SenCAD reduces the construction havocs experienced by site surveyors.
According to James Dean, the CEO of SenSat, ‘SenCAD delivers an order of magnitude improvement in achievable scale, cost-saving, time efficiency, and safety over traditional techniques. It therefore represents a step-change in providing universal and usable data in the construction and civil infrastructure space – allowing for better decisions to be made more quickly.’
The SenSat-Tencent deal
The full details about their deal weren’t revealed to the public. However, we know the amount of money invested in SenSat, which is 9.1M EUR, and the major reason behind the deal.
Beyond cloning real-world locations, there’s more to the SenCad’s initiative. If an AI tech could understand topography, it would help create autonomous vehicles and digitize many offline industries, for instance – warehouse management.
According to Dr Ling Ge, Chief European Representative at Tencent Holdings, ‘We are delighted with our investment into SenSat, which aligns well with the ambitions of Tencent’s Cloud and Smart Industries Group. We believe SenSat is well-positioned to introduce mass digital automation to offline industries that have not yet engaged in the digital revolution, and we look forward to SenSat applying its platform to a broadening range of smart industries.’
What’s next for SenSat?
SenSat plans to increase its team by three-fold before 2020. The new team would include software developers, mathematicians, data scientists, and creative solution providers.