Companies spend about $40 billion annually inspecting plants and equipment within the oil and gas, transportation and power generation sectors, and some individual businesses spend $100 million annually, according to General Electric Co., which in June began testing autonomous drones and robotic crawlers to inspect facilities and infrastructure in a number of sectors.
In trials with customers, aerial drones and robots move around and inside remote or dangerous facilities, photographing corrosion or taking temperature, vibration or gas readings. Drone data can be analyzed by computer algorithms and artificial intelligence, Alex Tepper, head of business development at Avitas Systems, a startup GE formed for this business, told the Reuters news service.