Launch Year in Review: Undeterred by COVID-19, SkyeBrowse Roars into the ‘20s

A belated happy new year from the SkyeBrowse team! The world has changed dramatically since our platform launched in January 2020, and by both design and opportunity, SkyeBrowse continues to evolve with it. Despite an unprecedented global pandemic, our platform greatly expanded its commercial applications and enjoys an increasing brand awareness thanks to the formation of several valuable partnerships. Our team rose to meet each of last year’s challenges as it came, and we now find ourselves entering 2021 with our flexibility tested, our creativity stoked, and our mission vindicated.

The COVID-19 pandemic started to impact SkyeBrowse around April. For months, skeleton crews manned emergency departments, which were forced to sideline personnel due to illness and caution. With little time for training, drone use decreased as overtime rates increased, and like many others, our partnership and distribution efforts temporarily stalled as the world hunkered down. While we waited for a light at the end of the tunnel, we continued to work on further optimizing and expanding our platform.

Throughout the rest of the year our team persevered through this adversity, and so did our technology, propelled by its ease of use, its flexibility, and the safety benefits it confers. Since our launch, public safety services across the United States have been increasingly trusting SkyeBrowse to establish operational security and rapidly gain situational awareness, and the benefits of this technology can extend to meet the needs of the situation and the creativity of the user. “After 3 years of researching and building the core technologies behind SkyeBrowse, it’s amazing to see departments using SkyeBrowse in so many different ways,” remarks co-founder and CEO Bobby Ouyang. “We initially launched SkyeBrowse just for accident investigation, but departments have already used SkyeBrowse to map structure fires, HAZMAT sites, SWAT operations, and natural disasters like avalanches and tornados.” The software has also streamlined pre-planning for riots and protests, as the centimeter-accurate 3D models deliver unmatched area insight by easily identifying lines of sight and points of ingress or egress. Simply put, when it comes to applying our platform, the sky's the limit.

5 alarm fire at foam recycling plant. Took 125 firefighters 17 hours to extinguish.

In 2020, SkyeBrowse helped emergency services render over 2000 3D area models with unmatched accuracy at a current rate of 10-20 models per day. Additionally, our platform was used to map approximately 0.1% of all car crashes in the United States last year, saving over 9000 man-hours in accident investigation and drastically reducing the exposure of thousands of personnel to traffic and other hazards. The manual scene mapping that usually takes a team of officers up to 6 hours to complete is increasingly being replaced by the ease and effectiveness that SkyeBrowse offers: a more accurate area model, delivered safely and remotely, in around the same amount of time it takes to make a cup of coffee. “Being old-school ACTAR kind of people, we trust through verification,” says Sgt. Michael Kerley of the Garden City Police Department in New York. “We hardline-method everything, total station map everything, and use SkyeBrowse. Every time, SkyeBrowse has been spot-on. It’s saved me two or three days’ worth of manual labor to get the approach angles and calculate momentum.” Besides saving users time, money, and risk, what’s the next best part about our revolutionary software? There’s no 3D modeling training required to make a perfect area rendering with SkyeBrowse.

3D model of Boston Dynamics Spot, made by someone who has never flown drones before.

When technology is this impactful, it must be shared. SkyeBrowse can already be found across the United States and abroad in countries like England and Australia, to name just a few. Plus, forging partnerships with like-minded companies like RMUS, one of the largest drone distributors in the United States, has helped to amplify our impact by harnessing additional distribution power. Additional partnerships with Darley and Metro Fire, two other major fire department suppliers and drone distributors, continue to help us expand our commercial reach. We strive to do right by these partners by providing them with cutting-edge technology while they help to ensure the continued and increased safety of emergency services personnel. We’re always grateful for the brand awareness our partners raise by using SkyeBrowse and we still have several other partnerships in development that we are quite excited to share in the near future. 

Despite the stresses and uncertainties of 2020, SkyeBrowse grew substantially as we reasserted our mission to deliver trailblazing technology while serving communities across the globe. Our software has already been adopted by a wide range of organizations to gain situational awareness quickly and safely, and better still, the possible applications of our platform continue to be widely imagined and explored. We are absolutely electrified and greatly heartened to see our impact spread so rapidly, first across the United States and now across the world. Beating the unusual circumstances on the merits of our innovation, SkyeBrowse is extraordinarily well-positioned to take on 2021.

Article written by Matt Lebowitz