Percepto Air Max
Percepto drone-in-a-box system for inspecting large industrial sites: this sheet covers the aircraft together with its Percepto Base station, which stores and charges it, and which stays permanently installed on site as infrastructure. Unveiled in November 2021 as the next generation of the Sparrow, it carries a 24 MP RGB camera with thermal or, optionally, a 16 MP RGB camera with an optical gas imaging (OGI) camera. Percepto has not published its flight time or payload.
- Year
- 2021
- Origin
- United States
- Autonomy
- L3 · Conditional autonomy
- Dataset review
- 2026-11 · Methodology & evidence levels
What it does, and on what evidence
Five mandatory fields on every sheet. A product page proves neither commercial availability nor full autonomy: here we separate what has been documented from what is announced.
- 1 · Task
- Carry out visual and thermal inspection rounds, mapping and gas leak detection at mines, oil and gas facilities and energy plants with no pilot on site, taking off from and landing on its station installed at the site.
- 2 · Autonomy by task
Does on its own
It takes off from its station, flies scheduled inspection missions, returns to the station to recharge and uploads the imagery, which the AIM software processes. Routes are pre-planned with waypoints and the aircraft follows them automatically inside a geofence.
A person steps in
A remote operator supervises missions from a control room and can fly manually when needed. In the US, Percepto operates under FAA Part 107 waivers: on 8 May 2023 it announced a nationwide waiver for “shielded” BVLOS close to structures with no people on site, and the current one (107W-2026-02228, valid 30 September 2026 to 31 August 2028) requires a remote pilot in command in the continental US, who may supervise up to 30 aircraft, and a documented survey of each site. In the Netherlands, the ILT approved BVLOS flights for its partner Falcker (announced 7 April 2022), and in Germany the LBA did so for a customer (10 April 2024). None of these public texts names the Air Max model.[Percepto, 2022][Percepto, 2023][FAA, 2026][PR Newswire, 2024]
- 3 · Strongest evidence
Operational use2023-06-12
According to the maker, when it was unveiled in 2021 it was already operating at large mining, oil and gas and energy companies on six continents, and in June 2023 an oil and gas customer was using the OGI version on site. Percepto does not name those customers for this model; its named deployments, such as Florida Power & Light, do not specify which drone model they use.[Percepto, 2021][PR Newswire, 2023][Percepto, 2022]
- 4 · Access
- Commercial product
It was sold as a complete solution with the AIM software and remote operations managed by Percepto; no price is published. As of November 2026 Percepto no longer markets any product under the Air Max name (see lifecycle).
- 5 · Lifecycle
- Previous generation
Percepto's website no longer shows the Air Max: the old address of its page redirects to the page of the Ranger drone (61 MP RGB and radiometric thermal cameras, with a Ranger OGI variant), which operates from the Harbor station. The Harbor page presents that station as Percepto Air’s dock and illustrates it with a video titled “Percepto Air Max Base…”, but Percepto has not said whether Ranger is the Air Max renamed or a new model. In October 2026 it repositioned itself as a software-first company (Axion platform) and keeps Ranger and Harbor as its own hardware.
Configurations
Variants of the same robot; not counted as separate platforms.
Air Max OGI
Variant with an optical gas imaging (OGI) camera alongside a 16 MP RGB camera, which Percepto presented in 2021–2022 as the only drone-in-a-box with OGI. In June 2023 the maker said an unnamed oil and gas customer detected a methane leak with it within hours. In October 2025 Percepto announced that the US EPA approved its autonomous OGI drone system as an alternative test method (Subparts OOOOa and OOOOb) for emissions under 1 kg/h; the release does not name the drone model and the EPA decision itself was not consulted.[Percepto, 2022][Percepto, 2021][PR Newswire, 2023][Percepto, 2025]
Spec sheet
Manufacturer maxima under declared conditions; not simultaneous. The test condition is shown under each value.
- Weight
- 9.5 kg
- aircraft (21 lb), 157 cm diagonal at propeller tips. The Percepto Base station, part of the system, weighs 350 kg and measures 166 × 162 × 168 cm
- Payload
- Not published
- Operating time
- Not published
- IP rating
- IP55
- aircraft; the Percepto Base is IP56
Primary source quality: Manufacturer / operator
Backed by:[Percepto, 2022]
Taxonomy profile
Where the platform sits on the four axes of the reference framework.
Autonomy
Conditional autonomy- L0
- L1
- L2
- L3
- L4
- L5
Makes local decisions on unexpected events; needs occasional remote supervision.
Coordination
Coordinated- Standalone
- Coordinated
- Collaborative swarm
Shares state and telemetry through a base station or central server.
Control
primary: BVLOS fleet- FPV
- Teleop
- Supervised
- BVLOS
- RL/VLA
supported: Teleoperation · Supervised mission · BVLOS fleet
Perception
3 sensing modalities- RGB cameras
- Thermal / infrared
- Gas detection
Operating environments
- Industrial plant
Sectors
- Infrastructure inspection
- Energy
- Mining
- Security & surveillance
Ideal business case
Scheduled inspection and gas leak detection at industrial plants
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