Except in certain extreme circumstances, industrial machinery doesn’t simply fail from one moment to the next. It’s often a gradual process that can be detected and stopped with the right technology.

Augury Inc. is one of the providers that industrial companies turn to for help with preventing equipment failures. Two years after its previous round, the New York-based startup returned to the spotlight today by announcing the completion of a $17 million investment led by Eclipse Ventures and Munich Re / HSB Ventures, the joint private equity arm of two leading multinational insurers. Their cash infusion will help fuel the growth of the startup’s diagnostics platform, which relies on sound to detect mechanical problems.

The basic concept behind the offering is fairly straightforward. Just as an experienced mechanic can often tell what’s wrong with a car by listening to the motor, so Augury’s platform can match the sound that an industrial system gives off to known technical issues.

The troubleshooting is carried out with the help of three separate components. The first is the Auguscope, a portable diagnostics device that resembles a smartphone in shape. A cord extending from the bottom of the gadget has a sensor at the tip that can be placed on a machine to record the humming of the components inside along with any vibrations that they might give off.

The Auguscope is designed to work with a mobile app that technicians must install on their handset to collect the audio measurements. Once it has been synced to an operator’s device, the recording is uploaded cloud-based environment run by Augury where automated diagnostics algorithms assess the data. According to the startup, the evaluation process consists of two main steps.

The platform first compares a machine’s sound and vibrations with previous recordings to identify potential abnormalities. Then, Augury’s algorithms compare the information against measurements collected from similar equipment at other locations to identify any other problem indicators that may be lurking in the data. Once the analysis is complete, the results are streamed back to the technician’s app.

Augury claims that its platform can not only alert operators to the presence of a problem but also pinpoint the specific issue to blame in many cases. The algorithms running behind the scene are continuously updated with new data from the field, which means detection accuracy is only set to improve over time.

Today’s funding will help Augury speed up its roadmap. The startup plans to ramp up customer acquisition efforts and seek out new partnership opportunities in the industrial world. Augury already counts more than a half-dozen major equipment suppliers as customers.  

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