U.S. Navy Awards $300M Contract to Robotic-Inspection Startup Gecko
Pittsburgh-based automated inspection company Gecko Robotics has won a $300 million IDIQ contract with the U.S. Navy to help fight the age-old enemy of corrosion with new high-tech tools. Gecko's robotic inspectors can crawl on steel structures of all kinds and detect flaws in minute detail, helping customers to plan maintenance in advance and build a digital record of asset health.
For the Navy, the most valuable metric in sustainment is yard time: an understanding of the vessel's needs means better preparation for a yard period, which means more efficient utilization of both the yard capacity and the vessel. Tech tools can help get more vessels out of shipyard faster, a requirement to achieve the Navy's goal of maintaining 80% combat surge readiness at any given time.
In a statement, Gecko said that its systems can help the Navy identify structural issues with its vessels up to 50 times faster than human methods can produce, and can complete digital inspections in mere days. Its proprietary technology can crawl along a flight deck and scan through thick nonskid coating. Combined with AI analysis, the technique generates a comprehensive map of corrosion.
“With savings of millions of dollars per ship, months of inspections turning into days and warships returning to sea faster, the U.S. Navy is demonstrating to the world how to deploy technology at scale," said Gecko Robotics co-founder and CEO Jake Loosararian.
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The contract expands upon a previous $71 million award covering work on 18 ships in U.S. Pacific Fleet, announced in March.
Gecko will also be involved in nondestructive testing of submarine components at Anduril's future manufacturing plants at Sparrows Point, Baltimore and Orange County, California, the firm says. The new Sparrows Point yard is expected to launch in 2030 and work at the OC site is already in progress.
