Gecko Cantilever NDT Advantage

This market is won by the company that can turn hard to reach metal surfaces into trusted maintenance decisions, not just collect robot footage. Gecko’s edge is that its wall crawlers stay attached to vertical steel and gather contact based non destructive testing data like phased array ultrasound and eddy current, then feed that into Cantilever for asset level planning. Rivals are strongest when the terrain shifts from steel walls to plant walkways, hazardous zones, or standardized tanks.

• Sensor capability matters because visual and thermal data can flag a problem, but contact sensors measure metal loss and cracks directly. Gecko’s robots scan steel assets with phased array ultrasound, acoustic sensors, eddy current, cameras, and LiDAR, while Invert is positioned around ultrasonic and eddy current inspection of tanks, especially in food and beverage settings.
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• Mobility splits the market by asset type. ANYmal and Spot are general purpose mobile robots that walk stairs, grates, and outdoor sites, which is why they fit refineries and broad facility rounds. Gecko is narrower but stronger on ferrous vertical surfaces like ship hulls, boilers, and tank walls, where magnetic attachment and continuous couplant enabled scanning are the core advantage.
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• The software layer is becoming a second battlefield. ANYbotics launched Data Navigator to organize thermal, acoustic, visual, and gas data for maintenance teams, while Gecko uses Cantilever as the operating layer for inspection history and planning. That pushes competition beyond hardware into who becomes the system of record for integrity teams and plant operators.
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The category is heading toward multi robot inspection stacks, with walkers, crawlers, drones, and fixed sensors each covering a different part of the asset. The companies that win will be the ones that own the maintenance workflow after the scan, because once inspection data feeds the planning system for shutdowns, repairs, and capital spending, the robot becomes much harder to replace.