TLDR: DroneDeploy announced significant advancements in agentic AI and robotics at its Horizons 2025 user conference. Key introductions include three new AI agents—Progress AI, Safety AI, and Inspection AI—designed to automate visual intelligence and site analysis. The company also detailed its roadmap for embodied AI ground robots, with beta deployments expected in 2026, alongside substantial platform enhancements for faster processing, improved accuracy, and advanced 3D modeling capabilities. These innovations aim to transform operations in critical industries like construction, energy, and utilities by providing a unified platform for robotic automation, AI-driven insights, and decision-grade data.
San Francisco, CA – October 28, 2025 – DroneDeploy, a leading reality capture platform utilized across more than 3 million sites globally, has unveiled a comprehensive suite of product innovations at its annual Horizons 2025 user conference. These advancements underscore the company’s commitment to a unified platform that integrates robotic automation, sophisticated AI agents, and high-fidelity data to revolutionize operations in vital sectors.
Mike Winn, CEO and co-founder of DroneDeploy, emphasized the immediate impact of these developments, stating, “The future of construction and industrial operations isn’t some distant promise, it’s being built right now on jobsites and in facilities. We’re meeting customers where they are, whether that’s enhancing the accuracy and automation of their current workflows or preparing them for autonomous robots.”
Transformative AI Agents for Enhanced Site Intelligence
DroneDeploy announced a significant expansion of its AI portfolio, introducing three distinct AI agents designed to automate tracking and analysis across diverse industrial and construction environments:
Progress AI: Leveraging the latest vision-language models (VLMs), Progress AI is capable of tracking over 50 projects, from commercial offices to hyperscale data centers. It delivers accurate progress reports in minutes, boasting a speed over 100 times faster than traditional ‘human-in-the-loop’ tracking solutions. James Stripe, Chief Product Officer at DroneDeploy, noted, “Progress AI understands construction sequences.”
Safety AI: This agent has already identified more than 90,000 safety risks on customer projects. New features include a floorplan view and automatic verification of resolved conditions, enhancing proactive risk management. Stripe added, “Safety AI knows how equipment should be used.”
Inspection AI: Making its debut, Inspection AI is purpose-built for predictive maintenance across assets in oil and gas facilities, rail corridors, renewable energy sites, and utility infrastructure. It automates the review of visual data to detect issues, ranks their severity, and seamlessly exports results to existing asset management and maintenance systems. According to Stripe, “Inspection AI identifies how assets degrade over time.”
Advancing Robotics with Embodied AI
DroneDeploy also outlined its ambitious roadmap for embodied AI, which involves physical robots autonomously navigating and capturing comprehensive visual data from both the interior and exterior of sites on a daily basis. Beta deployments for these ground robots are slated to commence in 2026. The company aims to develop autonomous systems that require zero robotics expertise, minimal intervention, and no fiducial maintenance, addressing the challenge of consistent data capture.
Unified Platform Enhancements for Superior Data Quality
To support these advanced AI and robotics capabilities, DroneDeploy has significantly upgraded its core platform. These enhancements include:
Up to three times faster processing and notable improvements in image quality.
Automated ground control point tagging and accuracy checks, ensuring survey-grade results.
Expanded automated earthworks analysis, featuring industry-standard grid views and rapid quantity exports.
A new Gaussian Splats feature, providing photorealistic 3D representations of sites.
3D scanning capabilities utilizing mobile device LiDAR.
Scott Brown, Construction Technology Manager at Garney Construction, lauded the platform’s impact, stating, “Automatic verification means I can stop being the data bottleneck and deliver higher accuracy drone data, every time, with less effort.”
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These innovations collectively aim to simplify field operations, enhance safety protocols, and enable faster, more informed decision-making across a broad spectrum of critical industries.
