SPRINT Robotics recently hosted a webinar featuring Hydromea and Square Robot, highlighting two different inspection challenges with a shared objective: helping operators gain deeper insight into critical infrastructure while reducing risk to personnel and minimizing operational downtime.
Hydromea’s Underwater Inspection Robot for Hydropower Assets
Hydromea opened the session by presenting its EXRAY underwater inspection robot, designed to inspect confined and submerged environments without requiring dewatering or human entry. Originally developed with TotalEnergies for ballast tank inspections, the system is now being applied to hydropower infrastructure, including tunnels, penstocks, pipes, and turbine runner blades.
With many hydropower facilities now more than 40 years old, traditional inspection methods often involve lengthy shutdowns and hazardous confined space entry. Hydromea demonstrated how EXRAY can significantly reduce downtime, completing inspections of turbine runner blades in just a few hours after a short shutdown, rather than requiring full turbine removal and disassembly.
Equipped with high-resolution cameras, sonar-based 3D mapping, and digital twin capabilities, the robot can operate in murky underwater environments while accurately identifying defects such as cracks, corrosion, and leaks. The system can inspect up to two kilometres horizontally and operate at depths of up to 250 metres.
Beyond hydropower, Hydromea is also applying the technology to cooling towers, fire suppression water tanks, and offshore wind monopiles, expanding opportunities for safer and more efficient underwater inspections.
Square Robot’s In-Service Tank Inspection Technology
Square Robot showcased how autonomous submersible robots are enabling inspections of above-ground storage tanks while they remain in service. Traditional inspections typically require tanks to be drained, cleaned, and entered by personnel, an expensive and time-consuming process. Square Robot’s system eliminates the need for tank entry by deploying a robotic platform directly into live tanks.
Using phased array ultrasonic testing (UT) and high-definition video, the robot gathers detailed inspection data while travelling across the tank floor. The system can detect both product-side and soil-side corrosion, while correlating video, UT data, and settlement measurements to provide a more complete understanding of tank condition.
The company also shared its rapid growth, expanding from inspecting three tanks in 2018 to more than 100 tanks in 2025. To support this scale, Square Robot has focused on standardized robot design, repeatable manufacturing, and a global network of trained partners, supported by an eight-week training program.
Recent projects demonstrated the technology’s value, including inspections that helped extend the life of a jet fuel tank by 15 years and a Naphtha tank by 20 years.
The Future of Inspection
Although the technologies operate in very different environments, both companies demonstrated how the inspection industry is rapidly evolving. Robotics is no longer simply a tool to make inspections easier, it is becoming a practical way to keep assets online longer, gather richer data, and make more informed maintenance decisions.
From submerged hydropower infrastructure to in-service storage tanks, Hydromea and Square Robot showed that the future of inspection lies in reducing downtime while increasing visibility, safety, and confidence in asset integrity.
Exclusive to SPRINT Robotics members: Watch the webinar on-demand HERE.
