Nexterity Develops Robot to Automate Dangerous Pipefitting Work

Elliott's focus on bolts grew from years spent thinking about infrastructure that moves oil, gas and petrochemicals. At last year's 13th annual Bolting Symposium, she said the highlight was playing "Bolting Bingo" against self-proclaimed "torque dorks" in the room. The bolts that connect sections of pipe—technically bolted flange joints—require hard physical work to loosen and tighten and are a source of many pipefitters' injuries, TechCrunch reported. Like many trade industries, pipefitting also faces a labor shortage.

"Those people get really tired when they're asked to work 12 hours a day for three months in a row," Elliott told TechCrunch. She said she has talked with pipefitters across the U.S. and Canada and repeatedly heard that North American pipefitting productivity is notoriously low.

Nexterity's answer is a battery-powered robot that comes in two main pieces and fits around a pipe. Once attached, it can slide across the pipe and quickly loosen and tighten four bolts at a time. Elliott said the startup has developed several configurations to fit different standard pipe sizes, all small enough to fit in a Pelican case and be carried by a single worker. That portability makes the robot easy to deploy to new sites, which TechCrunch reported is crucial to Nexterity's business model of treating the robot like rental construction equipment.

Elliott said she arrived at the design after conversations over the last few years, including at the Bolting Symposium and with members of the Pressure Vessels & Piping Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. "What I learned from the people, the torque dorks per se," she told TechCrunch, "is that 80% of our pipes are between two to eight inches in diameter, or what they call NPS2 to NPS8. And so when you have that much repeatability, you have a fantastic candidate for automation."

Elliott said the market is larger than many people might expect. She told TechCrunch that piping infrastructure is used in water, wastewater, water treatment, food and beverage, mining, nuclear and green and sustainable manufacturing facilities. "I think it would shock a lot of people just how big this market is," she said.