🧵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 📌]
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.
@lukas_m_ziegler Nope, it isn’t and won’t due to too high degree of specialisation 👇. The most value creating CEO of our time agrees
@lukas_m_ziegler Nope, it isn’t and won’t due to too high degree of specialisation 👇. The most value creating CEO of our time agrees
@lukas_m_ziegler Your thread is gaining traction! #TopUnroll threadreaderapp.com/thread/1964270… 🙏🏼@jbraga_360graus for 🥇unroll
@lukas_m_ziegler I like the boiler tube inspection bot. It's being used for fill scans of some of the pulp and paper recovery boilers.
@lukas_m_ziegler The other day I posted about wondering when we would have house painting robots. Seems it shouldn't be long now.
@lukas_m_ziegler 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
@lukas_m_ziegler People have had these for over a decade.
@lukas_m_ziegler Great fortunes are made addressing the tedious...combined, tedious & dangerous are worth a fortune when mitigated
@lukas_m_ziegler Humanoid robots go under the assumption that Humans are the most effective for many tasks
@lukas_m_ziegler Regardless, I believe the largest markets for robots will be humanoids assisting older adults and people with illnesses.
@lukas_m_ziegler Industrial maintenance costs a fortune. Massive opportunity.
@lukas_m_ziegler 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.
@lukas_m_ziegler The field of elderly care should also be explored as well
@lukas_m_ziegler 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
@lukas_m_ziegler This is why the trades aren't safe, and why that narrative is a pipe dream.
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, it’s more a Cambrian explosion of all sorts of robotics. Infinite, non-zero sum game.
@lukas_m_ziegler Let's not forget agriculture, from now to autosteer and self-driving machines for pest/weed-control, fertilization based on drones (scan, include AI, and apply locally). A lot is in development and testing, with a few on the market
@lukas_m_ziegler I want tiny robots that hang out in my mouth and clean my teeth
@lukas_m_ziegler 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...
@lukas_m_ziegler 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.
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 safety and efficiency in hazardous environments, driving a new era of operational intelligence. themfg.co.uk/autonomous-rob…
@lukas_m_ziegler That’s what I have been saying! Preventative maintenance Zero Downtime PMZ .ai
