Square Robots Secures $5 Million Investment for Tank Inspection Robots

Founded in 2016, Square Robot, a company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, and specializing in creating submarine-like service robots designed for tank inspection in the oil and gas industry, has secured $5 million in funding. This capital injection will be channeled into advancing the development and deployment of their tank inspection robots. Specifically, it aims to expand its robot fleet from seven to eleven units.

Square Robots is on a mission to eliminate the necessity of placing individuals in hazardous, confined spaces and to prevent the downtime of tanks for inspection. Their flagship robot, the SR-1, is equipped with an internal autonomy engine that seamlessly integrates guidance plans, navigation data, and a dynamic control system to facilitate autonomous inspections.

During the tank inspection process, the robot employs a sediment removal system to clear debris from the tank’s bottom before deploying its Phased Array Ultrasonic Testing (PAUT) array. The PAUT array conducts thickness measurements and gathers an impressive 18,000 A-scans for every square foot it covers. This data is rigorously reviewed in real-time by Square Robots’ operators to ensure data accuracy and quality.

These robots can be contracted, complete with a three-person crew, for inspecting above-ground tanks holding various liquids such as oil, diesel, jet fuel, gasoline, ethanol, and water.

The funding has been provided by Crosstown Capital LP, as disclosed by Hart Energy. In light of this investment, Milton Lovell, Managing Partner at Crosstown Capital, will join the Square Robots board.

Brian Kinsey, the Chief Growth Officer at Square Robot, expressed the company’s ambition to expand its fleet to encompass more than 100 robots over the next five to ten years.