3d-digital-twins
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PRENAV
PRENAV digitizes the world's critical infrastructure with drones, LiDAR, 3D analytics, and deep learning. Its web-based platform, PRENAV.XYZ, combines photogrammetry with AI to turn drone imagery into detailed 3D digital twins, then scans them for cracks, corrosion, and structural damage - resolving surface features smaller than 0.2mm. Founded in 2013 in Redwood City, the company replaces dangerous rope-and-scaffold inspections of cell towers, wind turbines, bridges, dams, and even nuclear reactors with automated, precise, GPS-independent drone flights.
Nathan Schuett
Nathan Schuett is the founder and CEO of PreNav, a Redwood City company that builds drones guided by computer vision to inspect the infrastructure most people never look at - cell towers, wind turbines, bridges, smokestacks. The idea started as a half-serious plan to fly coffee across a cafe and grew into a navigation system precise enough to fly a robot within centimeters of a steel structure without a GPS signal or an expert pilot. A Stanford computer-music graduate who detoured through video games and robotics, Schuett now also lists himself as founder of Forming AI, the next chapter of turning the physical world into analyzable 3D data.