Blog

The Key to Winning the Fight Against Forced Outages

Decision-makers at power plants constantly juggle numerous priorities on an everyday basis to keep facilities running seamlessly. From maintaining ...

AI Can Lead Us to Net Zero – If We Improve Its Data Quality

Gecko Robotics is a partner to the World Economic Forum (WEF). This article was originally posted on the Forum's Agenda. Artificial intelligence, ...

Pragmatism Today for a Net Zero Tomorrow

I'm packing my bags for Dubai this week to speak at the United Nations Climate Change Conference - or COP28.

The Stunning Environmental Impact of Eliminating Boiler Tube Failures

Enabling today’s industrial facilities to improve their availability, reliability, and sustainability is an important part of improving environmental ...

How to Modernize Construction Processes for Reliable Assets

Weld strength is crucial to the operation of critical assets like submarines. Defective welds can result in costly repairs, restricted performance, ...

What is a Penstock and its Role in Hydropower?

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that hydropower was responsible for 6.2% of the United States' total electricity production ...

4 Steps to Start Your Digital Transformation Journey

Digital transformation continues to gain traction across numerous business sectors. In 2022, companies invested nearly$2 trillion in digital ...

Three Ways Robotic Inspections Improve Safety

You’ve seen the signs on the gates of refineries and other process industry facilities: “This plant has worked 147 days without a safety incident.” ...

Data Transformation: From Reactive to Predictive Maintenance

With large industrial equipment comes inherent risks and costly consequences when something goes wrong. Asset failures can send devastating ripple ...

Smooth Sailing: Data’s Role in the Maritime Supply Chain

The world’s supply chain continues to adopt modernized approaches as consumers expect fast, often overnight delivery of goods. By replacing manual ...

Raising the Grade: America’s Infrastructure Report Card

We all depend on the reliable operation of infrastructure every day. Our infrastructure is the silent foundation for our economic development, supply ...

Pre-Turnaround Planning: Take Guesswork Out of Operations

Oil refineries help keep the world running by turning crude oil into products that heat our homes, fuel our cars, and serve as several essential ...

Reducing Risks: Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) Vessels

Pressure swing adsorption (PSA) vessels create and separate gases using a high degree of pressure. The PSA process can be implemented across a large ...

The Critical Role of Robotics and Data in a Secure Future

The World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting gathers government, business, and civil society leaders in Davos, Switzerland, to discuss global issues and ...

Seasonal Readiness: Powering Safe, Reliable Operations

Inclement weather conditions can cause catastrophic impacts on power plants, especially during the winter months with periods of extremely frigid ...

What's Needed to Ensure Energy Security and a Net-Zero Future

Gecko Robotics is a partner to the World Economic Forum (WEF). This article was originally posted on the Forum's Agenda. Countless global coalitions ...

In-Depth Data Insights Help U.S. Air Force Ensure Reliable Operations

The U.S. Air Force is steadfast in modernizing its intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) leg of the nation’s nuclear triad, the three-pronged ...

Ensure Reliable Power Production Amid Energy Uncertainty

When flipping on a light switch, most of us don’t think twice about it. Having access to electricity and power is something that many of us take for ...

Maritime Vessels: Corrosion Control with Robotic Inspections

Steel corrosion occurs when metals are exposed to a reactive substance, including oxygen, hydrogen, or water. Add a powerful electrolyte like salt to ...

Building Energy Security Through Innovation

Energy security has been in the news a lot lately—especially here in Europe. Governments across the continent are struggling to answer questions on ...

An Introduction to Multi-lead Rifle (MLR) Tubing

In thermal power generation, there are a number of processes in place within the boiler to optimize the efficiency of thermal energy exchange, ...

Benefits of Non-Intrusive Anhydrous Ammonia Pressure Vessel Inspections

Anhydrous ammonia is commonly found in the power and chemical industries. Within power, anhydrous ammonia plays an essential role in the ...

Dual Linear Phased Array Corrosion Mapping

Asset health is paramount to the efficient and safe operation of facilities producing energy and manufactured goods. Ultrasonic corrosion mapping is ...

Detecting Corrosion and Erosion in Horizontal Boiler Tube Assemblies

Boilers play an essential role in improving the efficiency of thermal power generation. Three boiler sections, economizer, superheater, and reheater, ...

What is Robotics as a Service (RaaS)?

As companies seek to optimize and automate operations, a new era of robotics-based technologies is stepping up to meet the challenge. However, ...

The Pros and Cons of Industrial Inspection Robots

In recent years, the non-destructive testing (NDT) market has seen many exciting advancements with applications ranging from bridges to buildings to ...

Plugging into Pipeline Inspection Tools

Ensuring pipeline and piping system integrity through planned inspections is crucial for operators to monitor damage mechanisms and avoid asset ...

3 Steps to Compliant API 653 Inspections

API 653 Tank Inspection, Repair, Alteration, and Reconstruction provides the minimum standards for performing these actions on tanks constructed ...

An Automated Approach to Detecting Corrosion Under Insulation

Corrosion under insulation (CUI) is corrosion that occurs in the base metal of piping, storage tanks, pressure vessels, and other assets when ...

Tri-Lateral: Identifying the Hidden Enemy in Wet H2S Service

Assets in wet hydrogen sulfide (H2S) service, or sour service, environments are prone to a unique set of damage mechanisms that can result in ...

Shifting the Paradigm: How Robotics Can Increase Confidence in Risk-Based Inspections

Risk-Based Inspection (RBI) is a methodology for assessing and prioritizing each piece of equipment in a process unit by its level of risk. It is an ...

A-Scan, B-Scan, and C-Scan Ultrasonic Data From Robotic Inspections

Robotic ultrasonic inspections are quickly gaining popularity in a number of industries due to the efficiency and data density relative to other NDT ...

Understanding and Detecting Sulfide Stress Cracking

Sour service, or wet hydrogen sulfide (H2S), environments are commonly seen in the oil refining, petrochemical, chemical, and gas industries as a ...

Robotic Inspections for Aboveground Storage Tanks

Aboveground Storage Tanks (AST) are vital assets for many industries including, power, paper and pulp, oil and gas, chemical, and even beverage ...

How to Integrate Robotic Inspections into Your Workflow

The use of robotics for NDT/NDE is quickly gaining momentum as service providers develop sophisticated technologies for assessing critical ...

Industry Drivers & Trends in Nondestructive Testing - 2021

Nondestructive testing, or NDT, encompasses inspection technologies and techniques used to detect flaws, increase reliability, maintain asset ...

The Cost of Unplanned Downtime for Refineries

In many cases, unplanned downtime is unavoidable. Hurricanes, earthquakes, or other unforeseen natural disasters—similar to what happened in Texas ...

The Evolution of Robotics

When most people think about robots, they might envision a leather jacket clad, sunglasses-wearing Arnold Schwarzenegger hoisting a shotgun, Star ...

Locating Damage in the Dark with Localization

One of the beauties of robotic ultrasonic testing technology is that it allows operators to see and measure things that humans alone cannot (e.g., ...

Perspectives on Robotics and Site Safety Outcomes

A few years ago, I heard someone say, “If you’re on-site, you’re in danger.” That’s a simple statement that really stuck with me.

A Cheat Sheet for the Alphabet Soup of Engineering Acronyms

Speaking as an outsider, engineers sure do love acronyms! It’s understandable. Engineers are trying to communicate technical properties, readings, ...

Enhancing Full Matrix Capture & Total Focusing Method with Robotics

In previous blogs, we have touched on Phased Array technology, a modern ultrasonic testing technique that is commonly deployed at oil and gas ...

Overview of Stress-Oriented Hydrogen Cracking (SOHIC)

In a previous blog, we discussed Hydrogen Induced Cracking (HIC) and how to detect it. Stress-Oriented Hydrogen Induced Cracking, or SOHIC, is a type ...

It's Earth Day- Robots to the Rescue!

Happy Earth Day, Earthlings. We, the Robots, are here to help! As the world momentarily pauses in celebration of Earth Day, let’s reflect on the ...

Non-Intrusive Inspections and How to Accomplish Them with Automation

Automating Non-Intrusive Inspections Provides Faster Inspections and Better Results Pressure vessels and other process equipment are traditionally ...

Women’s History Month: The Leaky Pipeline & A New Revolution

As March comes to a close, we reflect on the trailblazing women who led the way to change by celebrating Women’s History Month and the theme of ...

Unconventional Weather Impacts on Energy Infrastructure

In mid-February, unprecedented winter storm Uri left several million Texans without heat, power, and water, disrupting energy systems and sending ...

Top Education Options for Pursuing NDE/NDT Careers

The Nondestructive Evaluation and Testing (NDE/NDT) field is an in-demand career option offering substantial room for advancement, diverse field ...

Meet the Geckos Building Our Robots

The unique aspect of Gecko Robotics is that we are an industrial inspections company mated with a software and hardware product development company; ...

What is Automated Ultrasonic Testing (AUT)?

Ultrasonic testing (UT) is a branch of nondestructive testing techniques that involve emitting high-frequency sound energy, or ultrasonic waves, into ...

Best Nondestructive Evaluation and Testing (NDE/NDT) Resources to Follow in 2021

New Year; New Developments Nondestructive testing and evaluation (NDT/NDE) techniques used to evaluate the condition or properties of materials, ...

Two to Tango: Combining Robotic Inspections with Manual Ultrasound

When It Comes To Plant Inspections, One Size Does NOT Fit All Equipment employed at a coal-fired power generation plant is different from what’s used ...

Top 5 Reasons Industries are Turning to RUG for Piping Inspections

We are witnessing an inflection point in the approach to inspecting piping assets in the oil and gas industry, as well as other process industries. ...

A Better Fractionator Overhead Line Inspection Strategy

Robust Inspection Data Delivered Without Taking the Unit Offline An overhead system is one of the most vulnerable parts of a crude oil distillation ...

How to Achieve a Higher RBI score with RUG

Understanding the Risk-Based Inspection (RBI) Confidence Scoring System Driven by API 580 and API 581 standards, the first Risk-Based Inspections ...

What is Rapid Ultrasonic Gridding (and why should you care)?

RUG - the R stands for Rapid and/or Robot Rapid Ultrasonic Gridding (aka RUG) is an innovative inspection process of creating data-rich visual grid ...

On The Subject of Inner Diameter Boiler Tube Corrosion

Older Boilers are like Older Automobiles - Things Just Wear Down While the drumbeat of boiler retirement is unabated, many power generation companies ...
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