GE Testing Drones and Crawlers for Industrial Inspection
Posted: 2017-6-19
By:
Reuters
General Electric Co has begun testing autonomous drones and robotic "crawlers" to inspect refineries, factories, railroads and other industrial equipment with an eye on capturing a bigger slice of the $40 billion companies around the globe spend annually on inspections.
In trials with customers, aerial drones and robots are able to move around and inside remote or dangerous facilities while photographing corrosion or taking temperature, vibration or gas readings that 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 Reuters.
GE is expected to announce the new business, which is focused on the oil and gas, transportation and power sectors, as early as Tuesday at a conference in Berlin, Germany.
Read the whole article at Reuters.
