SkyeBrowse, a reality capture platform that can convert your DJI or Autel drone video into a 3D model at the speed of coffee, was launched only in 2020, but it has already saved law enforcement departments in the US over 50,000 hours of manpower and $5 million in accident reconstruction. As the startup celebrates its recent $2.3 million seed round with a spate of hirings, let’s retrace its backstory to see how “the fastest and easiest drone reality capture platform in the world” came into being.
The year was 2016 and Bobby Ouyang was a junior at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He had just begun research on what he called “The Drone Project” with Dr. Peter Jin, a tenured professor at the Rutgers Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation.
That project stopped being a side gig when Bobby found himself in a motorcycle accident a few months later. Hours after the accident, he saw first responders were still performing accident reconstruction,…
