The collapses of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge earlier this year and an I-95 flyover in Philadelphia in June were not caused by structural faults; rather, a runaway, powerless ocean ship and tanker fire were to blame. However, the disasters were the most recent manifestations of a widespread problem in the United States: trillions of dollars worth of important — and vulnerable — bridges, roads, dams, industries, plants, and gear that are quickly aging and need to be repaired.
severe quantities of money are being spent to address the challenges, including through President Biden’s Infrastructure Act and other legislation, but the method infrastructure is maintained has largely remained same, with most work done slowly by humans or after a severe issue emerges, such as a leak or collapse.
Gecko Robotics, ranked 42nd on the 2024 CNBC Disruptor 50 list, is taking on the national challenge with AI and robots, specifically wall-climbing bots that inspect infrastructure and not only identify existing issues but also attempt to predict what can be done to avoid future problems.
“When you think about the built world, a lot of concrete, a lot of metal that is, especially in the U.S., 60 to 70 years old; we as a country have a D rating for infrastructure, and getting that up to a B is a $4 trillion to $6 trillion problem,” Gecko Robotics CEO Jake Loosararian told CNBC’s Julia Borstin. “A lot of that is understanding what to fix and then targeting those repairs, and then also ensuring that they don’t continue to make the same mistakes.”
Gecko Robotics’ technology is already being used to monitor “500,000 of the world’s most critical assets,” according to Loosararian. These assets range from oil and gas installations and pipelines to boilers and tanks in manufacturing facilities.
Focus on military gear, from submarines to aircraft carriers.
Gecko robots are increasingly being used by the United States Military. In 2022, the United States Air Force granted Gecko Robotics a contract to assist with missile silo modernization. Last year, the United States Navy hired Gecko to help improve the manufacturing process for its Columbia-class nuclear submarine program, utilizing the company’s robots to inspect welds.
Gecko Robotics is also collaborating with the Navy to check aircraft ships, as Loosararian revealed on CNBC with a demo on the USS Intrepid, a retired aircraft carrier that is now a museum in New York City.
He compared Gecko Robotics’ infrastructure analysis to a CAT scan of a human body, which likewise involves constructing a digital duplicate of the studied thing.
Historically, these inspections were performed by staff who collected thousands of readings over an aircraft carrier. According to Loosararian, Gecko Robotics technology can capture up to 20 million data points in one-tenth the time.
“There’s human error, and if you’re hanging off the side of a ship, it’s pretty dangerous too,” he stated.
There are also concerns about the timeliness of military gear building and the readiness of defense assets in a volatile world of global threats. For example, Loosararian stated that China is manufacturing ships 232 times faster than the United States, owing to China’s vastly increased shipbuilding capability in contrast.
“A third of our naval vessels are in drydock right now, and you want them out of drydock or not even in a maintenance cycle,” Loosararian stated. “What we’re doing with Lidar and ultrasonic sensors is a health scan, seeing what the damages are and how to fix them, because what we’re trying to do is get these ships from drydock out to the seas patrolling as fast as possible.”
The digital twins developed by Gecko robots aid in the development of future projects, saving not only time but also resources and capital.
“It’s not just about how things work day-to-day but also how do you build smarter things,” Loosararian stated. “If we can understand what fails in the real world, then we can figure out how to build smarter things in the future.”
