Scanbots

The Challenge

Infrastructure inspections - particularly high-voltage power lines - are expensive, dangerous, and slow. Human inspection teams face access constraints, safety risks, and the sheer impossibility of visually assessing thousands of kilometers of infrastructure. The industry needed an end-to-end autonomous solution: not just a drone that flies, but a complete system from custom sensor hardware through field operations to automated defect analysis.

Our Role

Co-founded the company and served as CTO, responsible for the entire technology stack, hardware development, field operations setup, and team:

• Custom hardware payloads: Designed and built specialized camera payloads using Raspberry Pi, Jetson, and Arduino components for different inspection scenarios. Built a full custom Riegl lidar payload (€120k) for high-precision 3D infrastructure scanning
• Field operations: Set up and managed operational teams - pilots, technicians, and data operators - conducting drone inspections on power utility infrastructure. This wasn’t just software; we were sending teams into the field to fly over live power lines
• Inspector platform: Built the Inspector analysis platform (Vue.js frontend, Python backend) where operators could review inspection data, annotate findings, and generate reports. The platform integrated with our TensorFlow-based defect detection models for automated analysis
• Path optimization: Developed Python algorithms for optimal drone flight path planning - maximizing coverage while minimizing flight time and battery consumption across complex infrastructure routes
• Data pipeline: Built the infrastructure to process 200TB+ of sensor data from field operations, with Go streaming services handling high-throughput data transport between drones and the processing backend
• Team building: Recruited and led a 20+ person multidisciplinary team spanning firmware engineers, backend developers, ML specialists, drone pilots, and field operations staff

Results & Impact

Scanbots raised over €2M in funding within the first year, validating both the market need and the technical approach. The production platform demonstrated real-time defect detection at scale on actual power utility infrastructure, with the custom lidar payload delivering inspection precision that no off-the-shelf solution could match.

The combination of custom hardware, field operations, and software made Scanbots unique - most competitors had only one or two of these capabilities.

Why this matters for our clients: This engagement shows the full spectrum of what building a technology company actually requires. Not just code, but custom hardware, field operations, team building, investor relations, and the pragmatic engineering decisions that determine whether a startup succeeds. We’ve built companies from zero - we understand the pressures and trade-offs that founders face at every stage.