Jayhyuk Choi Email & Phone Number

South Korea

Gangnam-Gu, Seoul, Korea

Nearthlab, short for Near Earth Laboratory, is a tech startup focusing on autonomous drone solutions for industrial uses, making inspection easy. We are developing an end-to-end inspection solution for wind turbine blades, consisting of NearthWIND, a suite of autonomous drones, and Zoomable, a data analytics and management platform. We are currently providing our inspection technology to major global wind turbine OEMs, as well as numerous wind farm operators and O&M companies across Europe, North America, and the Asia-Pacific regions. For the past few years, most of our business was focused on providing a turnkey inspection service, where we dispatch our technicians to the clients’ site, fly NearthWIND drones, upload the data to Zoomable, and provide reports. However, we’ve been increasingly getting inquiries from our customers about the possibility of internalizing drone capabilities for a more timely and efficient inspection.To meet their diversifying needs, recently we’ve soft-launched NearthWIND Mobile, a mobile app that runs our proprietary autonomous flight algorithm entirely from a mobile device. Through NearthWIND Mobile, our clients are now inspecting wind turbines using smaller, inexpensive, off-the-shelf consumer-grade drones with only basic training.Also, we’ve released various automation and compatibility features on Zoomable. Now our clients can automatically sync inspection data on Zoomable to their own asset management solutions and have their existing (both drone and non-drone) inspection data to be imported into Zoomable for easier and more centralized data management, depending on their needs.We at Nearthlab believe in the role of technology as an enabler. We strive to provide efficient, easy-to-use, and cost-effective solutions to various industries’ long-standing problems

Yongin, Gyeonggi-Do, Korea

Doosan Enerbility, formerly known as Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction, is Korea’s leading manufacturer of industrial plants and renewable energy solutions. I was tasked to develop and to commission the Instrumentation and Controls (I&C) systems of thermal and nuclear power plants that function as the "nervous system" of the plant.The main purpose of I&C systems is to enable and support safe and reliable power generation through process control. I&C systems allow plant personnel to not only monitor the plant's status more effectively but also identify rooms for improvement and respond to problems. Integrating digital systems enables self-diagnostics and automatic plant protection, which results in improved safety. While modern power plant designs have highly integrated digital systems, the existing fleet of power plants are requiring the implementation of digital upgrades to address obsolescence issues. My team at Doosan Enerbility succeeded in developing and commissioning the system for thermal power plants of gigawatts capacity jointly with Korea Western Power Co. and the KEPCO Research Institute. It was during those projects when I witnessed that inspection of power plants, involving access to dangerous locations, was being done by human workers despite the risks involved. During that period, drones as we know now started to emerge, and I immediately saw how my research can realize the potential of automated drones across many different industries where inspections were still being performed by humans.I left the company in 2015 to found Nearthlab and set out to develop a solution to this problem.

Master'S Degree, Aerospace Engineering

During my master’s program at KAIST, I researched autonomous flight technology at Aerospace Systems and Control Laboratory. My thesis was.

Bachelor'S Degree, Aerospace Engineering

Activities and Societies: K-Alpha (Formula SAE Team)