The U.S. Navy has signed its largest robotics contract ever as the military branch seeks to use robots to continue the maintenance of its fleet.
Gecko RoboticsThe Pittsburgh-based company, which makes robots and sensors for the inspection of large industrial assets, has signed a five-year IDIQ (indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity) contract with the US Navy and the US General Services Administration (GSA). The contract starts with an initial award of $54 million and has a maximum salary of $71 million.
The Navy will use Gecko’s robots and sensors to monitor the condition and health of the US Navy’s assets and ship fleet, starting with 18 ships in the US Pacific Fleet.
Gecko founder and CEO Jake Loosararian told TechCrunch that the company’s robots will crawl around every corner of the ships to create a detailed digital copy (sometimes called a “digital twin”) of each ship. The company’s software will help the organization track assets and recommend maintenance, try to prevent problems before they arise and reduce maintenance times and costs.
“Once you create a digital representation of healthcare robotic systems and the state of these assets and even digitizing the environment, you can make decisions and speed up how you can repair,” Loosararian said. “You want to be able to build this living, breathing model that allows you to reduce the days these assets have to spend (out of service).”
This deal is intended to help the Navy achieve its goal of achieving 80% ship readiness by 2027. Today, about 40% of the Navy’s fleet is unavailable at any given time due to long maintenance periods on these ships.
“It’s $13 billion to $20 billion a year in maintenance,” Loosararian said. “It’s pretty critical at a time when you need every asset you can get. And those assets aren’t getting any younger.”
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Gekko has been in the US Navy for four years. After a port engineer based in Japan reached out to learn more about the company, Gecko conducted an assessment and designed a preventative maintenance plan. The Navy was impressed, and the relationship grew from there, leading to Tuesday’s agreement.
“We help ensure that our critical assets live as long as they can and never run out,” Loosararian said. “I want to live in a world where our ships don’t go through maintenance cycles because we just know what’s broken and what we need to fix when they’re actually deployed. That’s my vision for the future, whether it’s a military facility or a power plant.”
