Comment by jvanderbot

Solutions in this space almost never look "like robots". They end up looking more like https://atstrack.com/assets/images/series/seriesImages/F1200... or an arm / coil.

I worked on a robot that did precisely this in oil platforms. It had to find its way through gross, sludgy tanks to find leaks or cracks, mostly taking pictures to stream back / map environment and not using AI in the loop.

I've also worked on one for oil distillation columns.

And another one for test samples in composite manufacturing.

They all had the same problem: If you're far from the user, the absence of evidence of a leak is more likely attributable to bad sensing than good results. Far, far more likely.

And, I hate to say it, none of those actuators are going to survive contact with reality either.

Cool idea, but what you want is a snake / swimmer that feeds EOIR + radar, or a floater that screams ultrasonics the whole way through the pipe. Those _have_ been actually deployed.