Skydio
Assembly Line
🛣️ America’s Bridges, Factories and Highways Are in Dire Need of Repairs. Bring in the Robots.
These days, Shell is able to keep the plant running, and keep repair personnel on the ground and at a safe distance as they operate wall-climbing robots that inspect things like steel holding tanks at millimeter resolution, says Steven Treviño, a robotics engineer at Shell. Using a variety of sensors, the robots can look for both corrosion and cracking. This helps the team shorten the list of things they have to take care of when a full shutdown occurs. The magnetic wall climbers Shell is using are made by a Pittsburgh-based startup called, appropriately, Gecko Robotics. After testing the Gecko robots at Geismar, Shell plans to expand their use to offshore facilities.
“There are hundreds of types of corrosion,” says Jake Loosararian, CEO of Gecko Robotics, “and we’ve been developing technology and software to analyze what kind of damage is happening.” Gecko began as a robotics company, but has since expanded into creating software to process the data its robots gather. The startup makes systems that are now used to track more than 60,000 assets across the globe, including power plants, pipelines, oil refineries, dams, U.S. Navy vessels and other military equipment.
When it comes to inspections, “often the data you need is literally in plain sight, it’s just hard to collect it,” says Bry, of Skydio.
Skydio Soars Into 2023 as it Meets Critical Infrastructure Need
Skydio, the leading U.S. drone manufacturer and world leader in autonomous flight, today announced it has raised $230 million in funding following a year that saw its enterprise customer base exceed 1,200 organizations, just three years after entering the enterprise and public sector market. The $230 million Series E round brings Skydio’s total funding raised to $562 million with a current valuation of over $2.2 billion.
Skydio and Arris Revolutionize Drone Design and Manufacturing
Skydio, a leading U.S. drone manufacturer and world leader in autonomous flight technology, and Arris, a leader in advanced manufacturing of high-performance products, have redefined airframe design leveraging Additive Molding™, Arris’s breakthrough carbon fiber manufacturing technology. Starting with the new Skydio X2 drone, enterprise, public sector and defense customers will benefit from lighter, longer-range, and more robust aircraft structures at scale. The collaboration has resulted in the first-of-its-kind production use of Arris’s technology in the UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) industry, further extending Skydio’s technology leadership.
Skydio X2 is Skydio’s latest autonomous drone solution for enterprise, public sector and defense. X2 pairs Skydio’s breakthrough autonomy software with a rugged, foldable airframe for easy “pack and go” transportation, and up to 35 minutes of flight time. The X2 airframe will include a newly designed core structural element manufactured with Arris’s Additive Molding™ technology. Arris’s first-of-its-kind Additive Molding leverages 3D-aligned continuous fiber composite materials for complex shapes where material composition can change within regions of a single part. As a result, Skydio has been able to use a single carbon fiber component with the structural results that would have otherwise required 17 parts.