The company specialises in using machine learning for crop monitoring with a commercial focus on insurers and the agricultural industry. For example, the satellite data can help in verifying cover crops, tillage, planting dates, acreage, crop classification and weather damage.
PlanetWatchers says the latest funding round (there was a successful pre-series A round in June 2021) will help drive its expansion plans – to increase its presence in the market, invest in its SAR-based data analytics and increase its sales team to “address the increasing market demand to help solve global food security issues”.
According to the company, its system uses SAR imagery from TerraSAR-X to create high accuracy DTMs (Digital Terrain Models) with a technique that uses precise repeat pass interferometric SAR (InSAR) analysis.
SAR
An advantage of synthetic aperture radar – compared to more traditional satellite optical imagery – is that it enables day-night, all-weather imaging. It can be described as a type of active data collection, where a sensor records the amount of energy that is reflected back to it, making it responsive to surface characteristics.
Rivals in this area – using SAR date for Earth Observation – include IceEye, Capella Space and Synspective
“The company continues to grow by leap and bounds since our initial investment and is clearly a category leader within the crop insurance industry,” said Champ Suthipongchai, General Partner at Creative Ventures. “I have utmost confidence in its potential to upend multiple other industries through its satellite aperture radar technology.”
PlanetWatchers
With offices in Tel Aviv, New York and London, PlanetWatchers was founded by ex-members of Israeli military intelligence with the goal “of bringing the analysis of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to the commercial world”.
Image: PlanetWatchers – zooming-in on crop damage in Whiteside County, Illinois
