Gecko Robotics secures its biggest-ever U.S. Navy robotics contract

The U.S. Navy has signed its most significant robotics agreement to date as it seeks to modernise fleet maintenance operations through automation.

Gecko Robotics, a Pittsburgh-based company specialising in robots and sensors for inspecting large industrial infrastructure, announced on Tuesday that it has secured a five-year IDIQ (indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity) contract with the U.S. Navy and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA). The agreement begins with an initial award of $54 million and carries a ceiling of $71 million.

Under the contract, the Navy will deploy Gecko’s robotic systems and sensing technologies to assess the condition and performance of its assets and ship fleets, starting with 18 vessels in the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

According to Gecko founder and CEO Jake Loosararian, the company’s robots are designed to navigate hard-to-reach areas within ships, collecting data to build detailed digital replicas — often referred to as “digital twins” — of each vessel. These models allow for continuous monitoring and provide insights that help predict maintenance needs, aiming to reduce downtime, costs, and repair cycles.

“Once you create that digital representation using the robotic systems of the health and the condition of these assets, and even the digitisation of the environment itself, then you can accelerate how quickly you can make decisions and repair,” Loosararian said. “You want to be able to build this living, breathing model that ensures that you’re reducing days into the future that these assets have to spend [out of service].”

The contract supports the Navy’s broader objective of achieving 80% ship readiness by 2027. Currently, approximately 40% of the fleet is unavailable at any given time due to extended maintenance requirements.

“It’s like $13 billion to $20 billion a year in maintenance,” Loosararian noted. “At a time when you need every asset you can get, that’s pretty critical. And these assets aren’t getting any younger either.”

Gecko Robotics has been collaborating with the U.S. Navy for the past four years. The partnership began after a port engineer based in Japan contacted the company to explore its capabilities. Following an evaluation and the development of a preventative maintenance strategy, the Navy expanded its engagement with Gecko, culminating in the latest contract.

“We’re helping to ensure that our critical assets live as long as they can and never are down,” Loosararian said. “I want to live in a world where we don’t have ships going through maintenance cycles, because we just know what’s broken and what to fix while they’re actually deployed. That’s my vision of the future, whether it’s a military asset or it’s a power plant.”