The US Navy has signed its largest robotics contract yet as the military branch looks to use robots to continue maintaining its fleet.

Gecko RoboticsA Pittsburgh company that makes robots and sensors for inspecting large industrial assets has signed a five-year IDIQ (indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity) contract with the U.S. Navy and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), the company announced Tuesday. The contract begins with an initial award of $54 million and is capped at $71 million.

The Navy will use Gecko’s robots and sensors to monitor the condition and health of US Navy assets and fleets, starting with 18 ships in the US Navy’s fleet.

Gecko founder and CEO Jake Loosararian told TechCrunch that the company’s robots will crawl into every nook and cranny of a ship to create a detailed digital replica of each ship — sometimes called a “digital twin.” The company’s software will help the organization monitor assets and recommend maintenance, try to address problems before they arise and reduce maintenance times and costs.

“Once you create that digital representation of the health robotic system and the condition of those assets, and even the digitization of the environment itself, you can speed up how quickly you can make decisions and repairs,” Lusaririan said. “You want to be able to build that living, breathing model that makes sure you’re reducing the number of days in the future that these assets have to be spent. [out of service]”

The deal aims to help the Navy reach its target of 80% ship completion by 2027. Today, about 40% of the Navy’s fleet is unavailable at any given time due to long maintenance cycles on these vessels.

“That’s like $13 billion to $20 billion a year in maintenance,” Losaririan said. “At a time when you need every asset you can get, that’s very important. And these assets aren’t getting any smaller.”

Gecko has been working with the US Navy for four years. After a port engineer stationed in Japan arrived to learn more about the company, Gekko conducted an assessment and developed a preventive maintenance plan. The Navy was impressed, and relations grew from there, leading to Tuesday’s agreement.

“We’re helping to ensure that our critical assets survive as long as they don’t go down,” Lusaririan said. “I want to live in a world where we don’t have ships going through maintenance cycles, because we only know what’s broken and what to fix while actually deployed. That’s my vision for the future, whether it’s a military asset or a power plant.”