Inspection
Case Study •
When Wien Energie deployed Spot® at its Simmering Power Plant in Vienna in 2023, it was the first time a European energy provider had incorporated the quadruped robot into normal operations. Spot is designed to inspect machinery using a combination of cameras and sensors during autonomous missions to support predictive maintenance.
Four years later, Wien Energie is again making history by adding four new Spot robots to facilities in the Vienna area—one more at Simmering, two at the Donaustadt power plant, and one at the Flötzersteig waste-incineration plant, starting in 2027. Wien Energie estimates their original Spot has already conducted over 4,000 patrols and walked 1,600 kilometers, equal to the distance between Vienna and Paris. The company expects the latest Spot robots to be just as reliable.
Simmering is Austria’s largest power plant. Wien Energy relies on employees and technology to inspect the facility’s sprawling network of turbines, piping, and machinery. Simmering’s Drone and Robotics team supplements manual inspections with a range of robotic systems, such as pipe crawlers that travel inside pipes to check for cracks or leaks. The team also flew six different drones to inspect chimneys and machinery within the power plant. However, piloting the drones in confined spaces carries risk, and the drones tend to kick up dust, posing a safety hazard.
“We started with drones to do inspections in the power plant itself, but navigation is a little bit more tricky, especially if a crash happens.” said robotic software engineer Alexander Hamböck. “Then there was the dust.”
Spot’s ability to travel autonomously on the plant floor, as well as up and down metal staircases, made it a natural solution for the maze-like conditions of the plant. In 2021, Wien Energie launched a pilot program to to test deployment at the Simmering Power Plant, then incorporated Spot into regular patrols two years later. The vision is for the five Spot robots to expand the reach and scale of inspections, not replace employees.
Spot conducts 90-minute routes a few times each day. Using Spot APIs, Wien Energie’s drone and robotics team has developed AI models that extract information from the images Spot captures, such as the dials on analog gauges. Given the specialized equipment at the three power plants, Hamböck can’t rely on general-purpose AI models trained on generic, everyday images.
Instead, Hamböck and his colleagues Joshua Köster and Jean-Pierre Viljoen writes code to train the AI models how to perform specific inspection tasks within each facility. Together, the AI models turn Spot’s images into structured data operators can review. For example, one AI model reads gauges, another checks oil levels, while a third verifies that fire extinguishers are where they’re supposed to be.
“We sometimes have very niche demands,” said Hamböck. “Broader AI models trained on large data sets are not usable. We now have seven or eight different points of interest that range from analog gauges and fire extinguishers to oil levels, heat exchangers, and thermal imaging. There are always new feature requests that somebody wants. The information density increases because we have a new coworker.”
The AI models don’t interpret the data. That responsibility falls to Wien Energie data experts who analyze trends that might indicate a piece of machinery is working inefficiently or approaching end of life. When conditions warrant further investigation, the data team will alert maintenance personnel. The job of the drone and robotics team is to program routes and develop new AI models, as needed.
“Right now we are just focusing on the density of the data,” said robotics field engineer Charlotte Friedl. “The future is bright.”
Friedl works in the field, developing routes and ensuring the robots and their sensors are in working order, including lidar technology that helps them orient themselves within often claustrophobic interiors.
“I travel between the plants and focus on route planning,” said Friedl. “I fix the hardware and see if the payloads are correct and everything’s fine. I also train the robots onsite, because our requests are very customized.”
Meanwhile, Hamböck stays busy configuring the individual routes the robots follow. When a given Spot starts a mission, it loads the site map, determines its position, follows the prescribed route, and stops at predefined inspection points to collect data. Hamböck builds routes remotely using Wien Energie’s central software platform, although captured data remains onsite due to EU requirements.
“We need to process all the data locally,” he said. “There are things we cannot do by teleoperation. Mostly we have the same requests, like pumps and gauges at every plant, for example, but we still have to develop each route itself.”
Another benefit of Spot is its ability to integrate data with each power plant’s main monitoring system, which tracks sensors and controls devices such as pumps, valves, motors, boilers, and turbines. The combination of the robots’ inspection data with the general monitoring system can give operators greater assurance that an issue is worth investigating.
For example, Spot’s thermal camera may detect an unusually hot motor. The power plant’s monitoring system will reveal the motor is drawing higher-than-normal current. Together, those two pieces of information suggest a bearing problem may be developing.
The Spot robots also help address a growing concern within Europe over a wave of retirements expected within the energy facilities over the next decade. Energy providers are looking for ways to attract new talent to the industry, while also supporting the skilled staff they already have. Robotics programs like Wien Energie’s are one tool for reaching that goal, creating entirely new roles and extending the capacity of existing teams.
Hamböck and Friedl, for example, both started working at Wien Energie in 2024, having studied robotics at the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien, Vienna. They said the opportunity to work with Spot was a strong motivating factor.
“We are seeing a kind of shift,” said Friedl. “There are now robotics field engineer roles that didn’t exist even a few years ago. So we are creating new job opportunities.”
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