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Lukas Ziegler
@lukas_m_ziegler
🧵The quiet revolution in robotics isn't humanoids. It's the rise of inspection & maintenance robots, quietly scaling across dirty, dangerous, and distant industrial environments. This sector is projected to hit $8.3B by 2030. Let's break down why it's growing so fast. [Save this thread for later 📌]
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Lukas Ziegler
@lukas_m_ziegler
Inspection and maintenance robotics cover a massive range of assets: → Wind turbines → Nuclear plants → Subsea pipelines → Railways, tunnels, power lines If something is hard, risky, or expensive to reach, robots are on it.
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Lukas Ziegler
@lukas_m_ziegler
The 4 D's driving I&M robot adoption: 💀 Dangerous 🌪️ Dirty 🚫 Dull 📡 Distant These aren't robots for the future. They're already replacing human tasks in harsh environments, from high-voltage substations to underwater oil rigs.
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Lukas Ziegler
@lukas_m_ziegler
Swiss-made ANYmal handles industrial inspections in cramped, hazardous environments, stairs, oil rigs, wet terrain. Lately added, acoustic gas‐leak imaging that detects steam, toxic leaks, and hydrocarbons. ATEX-certified robot that can enter Ex-zones and inspect them instead
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Lukas Ziegler
@lukas_m_ziegler
This is a robot, not a mosquito. Voliro’s tiltable-rotor drones make high-altitude industrial inspections faster and safer. One 400‑ft stack UT inspection took 1.5 days versus 25 days with scaffolding, saving $165K. Their new T‑Version 5 adds 5G, real-time monitoring, and
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Lukas Ziegler
@lukas_m_ziegler
This is not the Loch Ness monster. Built to live subsea, Eelume AUVs wriggle through tight spaces, offshore wind, aquaculture, pipelines. Residing underwater, they’re on-call 24/7, minimizing mobilization time and CO₂ emissions.
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Lukas Ziegler
@lukas_m_ziegler
The inspection robotics market is quietly scaling into a multi‑billion dollar industry. 💰 Worth: $6.7B by 2025 📈 Growth: 12.9% CAGR through 2030 🔮 Forecast: $12.4B+ by 2030 From oil rigs to underwater cables, these robots are becoming essential infrastructure.
Multiple robotic arms in an industrial setting. Text overlays include "Industrial Robotics Market," "Global Forecast (2025 - 2034)," "Market Value (2024) $17.78 BN," "U.S. $3.84 BN," and logos for "GAT" and "Grayscale Insights."
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Lukas Ziegler
@lukas_m_ziegler
Tomorrow’s inspection ecosystem will be hybrid: air + ground + subsea + crawling bots, converging data into resilient insights. The robot audit of the physical world has already begun.
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AJ
@alojoh
Nope, it isn’t and won’t due to too high degree of specialisation 👇. The most value creating CEO of our time agrees
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AJ
@alojoh
In this new COMPUTEX 2025 keynote Nvidia's CEO makes an important argument for why humanoid robots are likely the only universal type of robot that will work: "the reason for that is because technology needs scale. Most of the robotic systems we've had so far are too low volume
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30 Winks
@30Winks
The other day I posted about wondering when we would have house painting robots. Seems it shouldn't be long now.
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Stephen Meyer
@stephen_e_meyer
in the “Last of the Martians” trilogy, 800y after Mars blacked out power on Earth, drones are animal-shaped: “beetle” shuttles, “possums” crawl around server racks, “rhinos” in earth moving, “spiders” to maintain the dome above the Martian city of Nubai
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Rad3k
@radekrybs
I agree that industrial robotics will continue to grow, especially as commoditized modular components gain widespread adoption with successful use cases in industry (vs proprietary expensive big-corp tech from Emerson, Siemens, etc). It’s not a competition vs humanoid robotics,
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Josh
@joshwagenbach
I agree we working on bio hybrid drones and sensors for All uses cases that normal robots fail
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Arthvidya
@Arthavidyas
these are all great use cases - something i’d grade very positively as a risk engineer for these industrial facilities non-humanoid robots have just begun to penetrate the massive TAM that is industrials
@RobotServicesX
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ascended intelligence maximalist
@hvo_e_acc
we need advanced robots and AI that can autonomously 3D-print concrete homes with steel foundations. grounded and elevated to resist floods, hurricanes and tornadoes. engineered to withstand high-intensity earthquakes.
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Erik Lindberg
@ErikLindy
Amazing opportunity. If you can do an ultrasonic inspection of a tank, vessel or pipeline without taking it out of service and draining it, you’re saving millions of dollars in downtime.
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Bob (Moderna #7) Kerns
@BobKerns
Humanoid robots are a niche, when you need a close match to a wide range of human capabilities in human-oriented spaces. Housecleaning, that sort of thing. It's not the most general approach; humanoid works because it slots into human spaces and human-designed tasks.
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Bob Hotchkiss
@Bobthegoatroper
Almost the same tech as the tethered quad copters that pick fruit. These things are going to be huge labor savers. Has anyone seen this system used for washing windows on tall buildings yet?
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Ordo Organum
@ordo_organum
Just like biological life on Earth evolved to be highly variegated, so too are robots evolving, multifariously. Apparently, then, sometimes it's more energy efficient to simply CHANGE FORM as environments change, rather than maintaining form while universalizing function.
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Marcus LaPointe
@MarcusLaPointe6
This movement is right on the cusp of extraordinary explosion. I’m loving the uses. We use a drone on the labs for various things and it’s been a time saver.
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fernandosicos
@fernandosicos
I really don't understand this complete focus in humanoids. It's pretty clear that there a gigantic market and opportunity for all diferent kind of robots.
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Hung Tran
@HungTran0182
Japan is tech leader, China is scale leader. Next 10 years, I'm worry that China will buy most robotic companies and dominate the market. It happen in solar, ev car+ battery industry, electronic, drone, high speed train...
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what’s diligence?
@whatsdiligence
What spread are you seeing across different models? Eg. OEMs buying/operating, Existing inspection companies buying or full-stack inspection companies? Wonder how many of these inspections and maintenance tasks are frequent enough for asset owner to acquire vs service company
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António Ferreira
@AMFerreira32
In Nuclear reactors only robots can reach most places. NDT is absolutely crucial for any plant wanting to extend its license (i.e., practically all of them)
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Ildiko Almasi Simsic
@IAlmasiSimsic
Imagine the support if we started connecting this to improved working conditions for people. Previously high risk tasks delegated to robots instead of humans! A true revolution.
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ThatDude
@ThatDudeShannon
It's all cool stuff, but I have a serious question: Is data safe? I feel like this offers a depth of weaknesses to be exploited. I mean the video showed a warship…😐
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IgorandFrankenstein
@Igor_Frnknstein
This reminds us of the weird snake like bot developed for getting into pipes or the weird smaller bug like bots for search and rescue (or more nefarious) operations.
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Tesla
@Tesla
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Proximal AI
@ProximalAI
At times I sense that the humanoid bot push is just a feint and diversion from the real revolution A full size, fast, strong, smart humanoid bot is not needed by 99% of the population A small, cheap, slow, weak, just smart enough to do laundry bot is all we need
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Stantrien
@stantrien
The human body plan is a generalist one. Robots outside social functions are more desirable in specialized roles, where there is less room for error.
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Soojin Snow
@Spread_Star
Quiet revolutions leave the loudest impact. These robots are lifelines for high-risk environments—proof that real innovation prioritizes safety first. The $8.3B growth speaks volumes. 💡
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Adam
@Adam57749683
There's so much data to save, transfer, and authenticate. I wonder what will help with this process
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Margi Chhappan
@MChhappan
Is the real disruption the machines themselves or the industries quietly rewriting human roles while no one’s watching the shift take hold?
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JORDI SOLSONA
@JORDITESLA
While this is true and very necessary, you can't compare the TAM for a humanoid robot capable of performing generic tasks to the market for small maintenance robots.
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Rue Mohr🇨🇦
@RueNahcMohr
mmm, I was asked to build a robot to inspect the inside of a water supply line about 2km long, but the fellow sorta disappeared as I was trying to get details.
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o-mega.ai
@o_mega___
Autonomous inspection robots are slashing operational costs by 30-50% for many organizations, fundamentally shifting industrial maintenance from reactive fixes to predictive asset management. This isn't merely about cost reduction; it's a strategic move enabling unparalleled
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sheley_zhou
@sheley_zhou
Yes. That would be a promising way. Robots can help humanity fill the vacancy(accomplish missions that very few people want to do or people have to run risk for). … Detecting/exploring mines Accomplishing dangerous tasks during infrastructure construction/maintenance … Various.
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Zero 
@Zero04203017
These robots won't scale, only humanoids can. Humanoids + simple tools is the way to scale up. Thousands of different models of single task robots are logistic nightmares won't go anywhere.
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Captain Righteous
@CaptRighteous
Many working men will loose jobs. Many Zieglers will cash in & rub their hands together. Everything will be modified for robots. When the robots fail real men will be called in to fix the problem. Only they won’t have the accessibility originally afforded to them before robots.
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Starlink
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