2026-10-20T05:00:22-04:00 / 福克斯新闻频道
壁虎机器人公司的扩展合同旨在加快战舰检修速度，将舰队战备水平提升至80%
摩根·菲利普斯
作者：摩根·菲利普斯 福克斯新闻
发布时间：2026年10月20日 美国东部时间上午5:00
海军新型“CAT扫描”机器人探查美军战舰内部隐蔽损伤
壁虎机器人公司首席执行官杰克·卢萨瑞安表示，随着海军将该公司的合同上限提升至3亿美元，人工智能驱动的巡检工作能够降低维修成本，让战舰更快重返大洋。
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【福克斯新闻独家首发】： 美国海军将其用于战舰巡检的人工智能机器人合同上限提升至3亿美元，规模扩大三倍。
在最初启用这项技术仅六个月后，这家位于匹兹堡的壁虎机器人公司就获得了续约，这凸显出美国军方对技术解决方案的重视程度。该合同最初的上限为7100万美元，而眼下美国海军正致力于在与中国日益扩大的造船差距中提升舰队战备水平。
“虽然美国或许无法在造船速度上超过中国，但我们可以在舰艇维护、运营和战备状态保持的方式上智胜对手，”壁虎机器人公司首席执行官杰克·卢萨瑞安向福克斯新闻数字频道说道。
壁虎机器人公司称，其技术能够为单艘战舰节省高达800万美元的维修成本，并且识别某些结构问题的速度比传统巡检方法快50倍。
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壁虎机器人公司利用机器人巡检和人工智能软件绘制美国海军战舰的结构状况图，帮助维修人员确定需要维修的区域。
该公司还推出了一款专为海军研发的新型机器人，无需先剥离涂层就能检查战舰甲板厚涂层下方的钢材状况。
这款被命名为科莫多的机器人会扫描战舰甲板，绘制腐蚀和材料厚度分布图，让维修人员在开展更多侵入性作业前就能明确需要修复的部位。
“这本质上就是一场CAT扫描，”卢萨瑞安说道，“你能确切了解战舰的状况。”
传统上，要确定战舰防滑甲板涂层下方钢材的状况，需要先移除涂层才能了解问题的严重程度。科莫多机器人则无需拆解舰体表面就能获取相关信息。
“机器人无需拆解战舰就能明确故障所在，”卢萨瑞安说道。
卢萨瑞安援引的另一个案例显示，最初评估认为需要修复约1200平方英尺的区域，但在机器人巡检提供了更精准的受损情况后，维修范围被缩小到约300平方英尺。
“你可以缩减并聚焦所需的维修类型，”卢萨瑞安说道，“你需要维修的区域更少了。”
一只壁虎机器人公司的爬壁机器人正在扫描美国海军战舰的表面，收集材料状况数据，用于分析腐蚀和结构损伤情况。
中国长期财政状况堪忧，维护其庞大海军的账单将于2031年到期
此次合同上限上调距离海军授予壁虎机器人一份为期五年、价值7100万美元的合同仅六个月，该合同旨在将其机器人巡检技术推广至整个舰队。
根据今年3月公布的初始协议，壁虎机器人将开始为美国太平洋舰队的18艘战舰提供服务，其中包括驱逐舰、两栖战舰和濒海战斗舰。
该公司的爬壁机器人可以攀爬船体、飞行甲板、压载水舱和其他难以抵达的区域，扫描腐蚀、金属损耗和其他结构问题。相关数据会被输入壁虎机器人公司的人工智能驱动的“悬臂”平台，帮助维修规划人员确定需要维修的部位。
其目标是在战舰进入大规模维修周期前更早地发现问题，避免维修人员在此时发现额外的维修任务，导致战舰在船厂停留的时间延长。
“最大的节省在于速度，”卢萨瑞安说道，“速度——这是无法用金钱衡量的，尤其是对于当下的美国海军而言。”
此次合同扩容之际，海军领导层正致力于将舰队战备水平提升至80%，而维修延误仍在让大量本可投入部署的战舰停摆。
中国海军的作战舰艇规模已经超过美国海军，并且造舰速度是美国造船厂难以企及的。这给五角大楼带来了额外压力，要求其让现役美国舰队中更多舰艇能够投入行动。
此次巡检工作将聚焦于驱逐舰、两栖战舰和濒海战斗舰——这些舰艇是美国在印太地区海军行动的核心力量。
对壁虎机器人公司而言，其长期目标是超越现有损伤排查，利用多年的巡检数据提前预判问题，避免战舰因故障进入更长时间的维修周期。
“你能够在故障发生前精准预测哪里会出问题，”卢萨瑞安说道，这样维修规划人员就能在战舰靠岸或进入船厂时，提前准备好工人、材料和维修方案。
随着工业基地熟练劳动力短缺问题日益突出，这项技术还可以减少船厂工人从事的危险且劳动密集型巡检工作。
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卢萨瑞安表示，机器人技术与人工智能的结合最终旨在让有限的劳动力能够将更多时间用于维修战舰，而非花费时间确定需要维修的部位。
他认为，对于正努力追赶快速扩张的中国海军的美国海军来说，充分发挥现役舰艇的效能可能与建造新舰艇同样重要。
“虽然美国或许无法在造船速度上超过中国，”卢萨瑞安说道，“但我们可以在舰艇维护、运营和战备状态保持的方式上智胜对手。”
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6407093145112
Navy robot deal quadruples as US looks to ‘outsmart’ China with AI at sea
2026-10-20T05:00:22-04:00 / Fox News
Gecko Robotics’ expanded deal aims to speed warship inspection and push fleet readiness toward 80%
Morgan Phillips
By Morgan Phillips Fox News
Published October 20, 2026 5:00am EDT
Navy’s new ‘CAT scan’ robot hunts hidden damage inside US warships
Gecko Robotics CEO Jake Loosararian says AI-powered inspections can cut repair costs and get warships back to sea faster as the Navy expands the company’s contract ceiling to $300 million.
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FIRST ON FOX: The U.S. Navy is quadrupling the ceiling on a contract for AI-powered robots used to inspect warships to $300 million.
Just six months after initially tapping the technology to help get ships through maintenance and back to sea faster, the expanded agreement with Pittsburgh-based Gecko Robotics underscores the importance the U.S. military is putting on tech-based solutions. The initial ceiling for the deal was $71 million, but the Navy is pushing to improve fleet readiness amid a widening shipbuilding gap with China.
“While the U.S. may not be able to out-manufacture faster than China, we can outsmart the ways that we maintain, operate and are ready with our vessels,” Gecko Robotics CEO Jake Loosararian told Fox News Digital.
Gecko says its technology can save the Navy up to $8 million in repair costs on a single ship and identify some structural issues up to 50 times faster than traditional inspection methods.
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Gecko Robotics uses robotic inspections and AI-powered software to map structural conditions aboard U.S. Navy warships, helping maintenance crews identify areas that may need repair.(Gecko Robotics)
The company is also unveiling a new robot developed specifically for the Navy that can inspect the steel beneath thick coatings on warship decks without first stripping them away.
Dubbed Komodo, the robot scans a ship’s deck to map corrosion and material thickness, giving maintenance crews a picture of what needs to be repaired before more invasive work begins.
“It’s essentially a CAT scan,” Loosararian said. “You’re basically understanding exactly what’s going on.”
Traditionally, determining the condition of steel beneath a ship’s non-skid deck coating can require removing material before crews know the extent of the problem. Komodo is designed to gather that information without first taking the surface apart.
“The robots are able to actually understand what’s wrong without having to take apart the ship to figure out what to fix,” Loosararian said.
In another example cited by Loosararian, an assessment that initially called for roughly 1,200 square feet of repair work was narrowed to about 300 square feet after robotic inspections provided a more precise picture of the damage.
“You reduce and focus the kinds of repairs that you need,” Loosararian said. “You’re repairing less.”
A Gecko Robotics wall-climbing robot scans the surface of a U.S. Navy warship, collecting data on material condition that can be analyzed for corrosion and structural damage.(Gecko Robotics)
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The increased ceiling comes just six months after the Navy awarded Gecko a five-year, $71 million contract vehicle to expand the use of its robotic inspection technology across the fleet.
Under the initial agreement announced in March, Gecko was set to begin work on 18 ships in the U.S. Pacific Fleet, including destroyers, amphibious warships and littoral combat ships.
The company’s wall-climbing robots crawl across hulls, flight decks, ballast tanks and other difficult-to-access areas, scanning for corrosion, metal loss and other structural problems. The data is fed into Gecko’s AI-powered Cantilever platform to help maintenance planners determine where repairs are needed.
The goal is to find those problems earlier, before a ship enters a major maintenance period and crews discover additional work that can extend its stay in the shipyard.
“The biggest savings are just in speed,” Loosararian said. “Speed — you can’t put a price tag on it, especially if you’re in the U.S. Navy right now.”
The expansion comes as Navy leaders seek to push fleet readiness toward 80% while maintenance delays continue to sideline ships that would otherwise be available for deployment.
China already fields a larger battle force than the U.S. Navy and can produce vessels at a pace American shipyards cannot easily match. That has put additional pressure on the Pentagon to keep more of the ships already in the American fleet available for operations.
The inspections will focus on destroyers, amphibious warships and littoral combat ships — vessels that form a core part of U.S. naval operations in the Indo-Pacific.(Gecko Robotics)
For Gecko, the longer-term goal is to move beyond finding existing damage and use years of inspection data to anticipate problems before they force ships into longer repair periods.
“You are able to predict exactly what’s going to break before it does,” Loosararian said, allowing maintenance planners to have workers, materials and repair plans ready when a ship reaches the pier or enters a shipyard.
The technology could also reduce the amount of dangerous and labor-intensive inspection work performed by shipyard workers as the industrial base struggles with shortages of skilled labor.
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Loosararian said the combination of robotics and AI is ultimately aimed at allowing a limited workforce to spend more time fixing ships and less time determining what needs to be fixed.
For a Navy racing to keep pace with a rapidly expanding Chinese fleet, he argued, getting more out of the ships already in the water could prove just as important as building new ones.
“While the U.S. may not be able to out-manufacture faster than China,” Loosararian said, “we can outsmart the ways that we maintain, operate and are ready with our vessels.”
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6407093145112
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