Powerline inspection specialist Sharper Shape is acquiring Ai4 Technologies, a provider of real-time remote sensing technology. The acquisition will combine Ai4’s remote sensing offering with Sharper Shapes’ Living Digital Twin (LDT) technology to provide a more continuous, flexible service for electricity grid operators.

Sharper Shape’s LDT incorporates real-time updates and asset change detection into a traditional 3D digital twin model, integrating aerial, ground, and third-party asset data into a single software platform. Ai4 Technologies’ artificial intelligence software uses a vehicle-based acquisition platform, which can add another dimension of data to Sharper Shape’s offerings by enhancing the acquisition data density to over 1000 LiDAR points per square meter. Cost and time efficiencies are also improved, with the data acquisition operation only requiring a single person, without the requirement of specific skills, meanwhile time-critical applications are made more achievable through the rapid results enabled from end-to-end automation.

Chris Beaufait, CEO of Sharper Shape, said of the acquisition, “Sharper Shape’s automated inspection software is currently in use on transmission and distribution assets globally, with over 6.4 petabytes of data collected from 40,000 linear miles of corridor. This data equates to over 6,000,000 assets inspected and over 50,000,000 detections recorded. The acquisition of Ai4 Technologies enables us to tap into the company’s technical capabilities and similar set of products and services to support our industry-leading digital twin technology and expand into new T&D assets. As a result, we are looking forward to incorporating the learnings from Ai4 Technologies to help elevate our current AI data processing pipeline which increases grid safety, reliability, and carbon emissions. Moreove, we continue to support our customers with best-in-class solutions for intelligent asset management.”

Tero Heinonen, CEO of Ai4 Technologies, added, “Ai4 Technologies has developed a unique, vehicle-based acquisition platform called Ai4 MobileSense. The solution automatically provides LiDAR and imagery, and the acquisition can be targeted flexibly with no lead times, producing rapid results for the user, without compromising accuracy. This automation drastically reduces cost and time to outcome, which is crucial in time-sensitive and mission-critical applications. Ai4 is proud to be joining the Sharper Shape family and to provide unique ground-based acquisition to complement Sharper Shape’s holistic digital twin solutions and other acquisition methods.”