Gecko Robotics has secured the US Navy’s largest robotics deal to date

The US Navy has signed its largest robotics deal to date, as the military branch looks to use robots to keep up with the maintenance of its fleet.

Gecko Robotics, a Pittsburgh-based company that makes robots and sensors for inspecting large industrial assets, has signed a five-year IDIQ (indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity) deal with the U.S. Navy and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), the company announced Tuesday. The deal starts with an initial bonus of $54 million and a cap hit of $71 million.

The Navy will use Gecko’s robots and sensors to monitor the condition and health of U.S. Navy assets and fleets, starting with 18 ships in the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

Gecko founder and CEO Jake Loosararian told TechCrunch that the company’s robots will crawl into every nook and cranny of the ships to create a detailed digital replica — sometimes called a “digital twin” — of each ship. The company’s software will help the organization monitor assets and recommend maintenance, try to anticipate problems before they arise and reduce maintenance times and costs.

“Once you create that digital representation with robotic systems of the safety and condition of these assets, and even digitize the environment itself, you can accelerate how quickly decisions can be made and remedied,” Losarian said. “You want to be able to build that living, breathing model that ensures that you’re minimizing the days that these assets have to live in the future [out of service]”.

This deal is intended to help the Navy reach its goal of 80% ship readiness by 2027. Today, about 40% of the Navy’s fleet is unavailable at any given time due to the long maintenance cycles of these ships.

“The cost of maintenance ranges from $13 billion to $20 billion annually,” Losarian said. “At a time when you need all the assets you can get, this is critical. And those assets aren’t getting any younger either.”

Geico has been with 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 developed a preventative maintenance plan. The Navy was impressed, and the relationship has grown since then, leading to Tuesday’s agreement.

“We are helping to ensure that our critical assets last as long as possible and never fail,” Losarian said. “I want to live in a world where ships don’t go through maintenance cycles, because we only know what’s broken and what needs to be fixed while they’re actually deployed. This is my vision of the future, whether it’s a military asset or a power plant.”