Drones and artificial intelligence come together in this project that has won the first innovation challenge ‘Drone Challenge’, launched by Abertis.
Azisa & Aren is the result of the union of a Spanish and an American company that have joined forces to revolutionize the infrastructure inspection. The solution offers more efficient, profitable and sustainable supervision services thanks to the combined experience in drone technology and artificial intelligence applied to structure management.
The award-winning project, piloted jointly between the company Azisa, based in Gijón, and Aren, based in New York, represents a before and after in infrastructure inspection thanks to the experience of the Spanish company, which offers inspection services. inspection based on drones and the technology of the American, expert in artificial intelligence applied to the management of structures.
Together, they have positioned themselves as a unique solution that provides an end-to-end service for the life cycle management of road infrastructure.
We interviewed three of the directors of these two companies: Raúl Álvarez Vivanco (partner-director of Azisa), together with Ali Khaloo and Edgar Martinez (co-founders of Aren, as well as CEO and COO, respectively, of the company)
Aren’s origins
Aren Inc. (New York) is a company software which uniquely combines AI applied to road infrastructure management from the point of view of civil engineering. Aren co-founders Ali Khaloo and Edgar Martinez Ceja met at Cornell as part of the Runway Startups program, which supports researchers to commercialize their technologies.
At that time, the two founders joined forces to solve the problem of suboptimal spending of trillions of dollars on civil infrastructure caused by the manual nature of assessments of these assets.
«The main problem in the industry is data, from complex data collection to data administration and analysis. The manual nature of the status quo introduces inconsistencies and a lack of objectivity into the data. Currently, there are no advanced tools to process data at the required scale; in the best of cases, the industry uses Excel and manual PDF reports,” the experts explain.
Before Aren, Ali Khalooas a result of having inspected bridges, a highly manual and tedious process, dedicated his professional career to developing AI and civil engineering technology to evaluate large-scale civil infrastructure.
For his part, before Aren, Edgar Martínez Cejadedicated his professional career to commercializing cutting-edge technology to solve high-impact problems.
Drones born in Asturias
On the other hand, Azisa (Gijón), is a drone inspection company and other unmanned vehicles that provide services in the infrastructure, nuclear, oil & gas or chemical sectors.
«For more than eight years working in the capture and processing of data for the inspection and digitization of assets, we have been very aware of how difficult and complex it is to evaluate for the human eye, for people, and that has made In recent years we have done a lot of research into how to improve this process, how to transform it towards a model that is one hundred percent objective, fed with millions of data that no person could remember and that helps us as a company to improve the services we provide to our clients,” explains Raúl Álvarez Vivanco.
As a result of this research and multiple tests and trials, In early 2023, Aren and Azisa crossed paths. Since then, until now they have worked on multiple projects together, joining forces and expertise and their goal is that together, the scale of their services is global, as they tell us.
ENTREPRENEURS: What needs did you detect in your area?
At a macroeconomic level, the world of civil infrastructure faces two problems. The first problem is that civil infrastructure spending is suboptimal in the order of trillions of dollars. This inefficiency is one of the consequences of the manual nature of the inspections and the objectivity of the data. Although we have excellent engineers, it is impossible for a human being to identify, characterize and process every damage that exists across thousands of kilometers of infrastructure.
The second problem is a security problem. Most infrastructures are at an advanced point in their life cycle and globally we are beginning to see cases of infrastructure failures. This problem can have a strong impact on the daily lives of entire communities. For example, when a bridge unfortunately collapses the economic and social impact on the communities around it is gigantic. Our focus is to solve these two problems.
At the microeconomic level, what we have found is that private road infrastructure developers are extremely interested in improve the civil infrastructure evaluation process through the use of technology like the one we provided between Aren and Azisa.
On the one hand, there is a direct economic benefit since spending is optimized throughout the life cycle and this results in increased infrastructure security, which increases user security. Abertis is a perfect example of developers interested in adopting cutting-edge technologies and driving towards positive, digital change in this sector.
How do you differentiate yourself from other similar companies?
There are two key aspects that make this proposal unique. On the one hand there is Aren’s patented technology. A technology that unites AI and civil engineering to optimize the cost throughout the life cycle of road infrastructure. On the other hand, the capacity of the global service that Azisa provides. Together the solution becomes unique.
Aren has created the largest AI training data set for civil infrastructure globally. Azisa is not only an inspection company, but thanks to its capacity to develop unmanned robotic platforms, it can successfully execute any project, no matter how complex it may be.
What market advantages did you find along the way?
There is a big difference in having a generalist approach or being focused on a particular problem. One of our great advantages is that We are focused on uniting AI and civil engineering to solve the specific problem of civil infrastructure without being distracted by other industries.. In these years we have seen that this is a great advantage.
What help did you receive to start the project?
Building a company is a team effort. We have received help from investors and institutions.
Our work team is one of the most important parts. Each person on the team strives every day to find and improve solutions to the two problems we are dedicated to solving, optimizing the cost of management throughout the life of civil infrastructure and increasing its security. Part of our mission is to increase the resilience of infrastructure and extend its life.
“Our key to success is to ensure that we are providing value to our customers, optimizing costs, and to society, by increasing the security of these infrastructures.”
Raúl Álvarez Vivanco
Our clients are also very important. Clients like Abertis who have given us their vote of confidence to help them solve their problems.
In the financing part, we have had the support of Venture Capital funds, eg Shadow Ventures and Cornell among others.
What does it mean for you to win the first Drone Challenge launched by Abertis?
Having won the Abertis challenge has an extremely relevant impact on our career. On the one hand, it is a recognition of the road infrastructure management industry to the work we have been doing in recent years, a recognition that comes from Abertis, one of the most recognized companies in this business.
Went selected from more than 70 global companies, a recognition that we are the best technological solution for the industry. On the other hand, it represents a very important growth opportunity given the global impact that Abertis has in this sector.
At Aren and Azisa we are extremely excited to collaborate with Abertis and we see great potential in this collaboration to positively transform this industry.
What will your collaboration with Abertis be like after having won?
We are very excited to collaborate with Abertis. Actually we are preparing to execute the pilot project as a first step to add value to Abertis’ global operations. In this sense, they are evaluating projects in Chile, Puerto Rico and Spain.
We believe that a horizon of very great possibilities opens up with Abertis and we thank them for the trust placed in us.
What do you think are your keys to success?
Our key to success is to ensure that we are providing value to our customers and society. With our clients we have the responsibility to optimize management costs throughout the life of road assets and with society we have the responsibility to increase the safety of these infrastructures.
Furthermore, we are determined to improve resilience and extend the life of infrastructure. We are building a required solution to a high-impact problem. Finally, we understand the problem well since our experience has been within the industry, which allows us to build a technological solution that solves the most critical problems.
What are your challenges or future perspectives?
Our vision is a world where civil infrastructure has access to a global platform where AI and civil engineering work together for a better future. A platform where the intelligence of an asset helps the rest of the assets operate better.
In the 21st century it is not acceptable that lives are lost when an infrastructure system fails. We are determined to bring AI to the asset management community.
