Rolls Royce is building cockroach like robots and snakes to fix airplane engines
In the future we'll see more maintenance jobs performed by robots of all sizes.
Cite or link to this article
Griffin, M. (2018) 'Rolls Royce is building cockroach like robots and snakes to fix airplane engines', 311 Institute, 29 July. Available at: https://www.311institute.com/rolls-royce-building-cockroach-robots-snakes-to-fix-airplane-engines/ (Accessed: 1 October 2026).
Typically engineers want to get bugs out of their creations but that’s not the case for Rolls Royce, the engineering company who are building everything from autonomous cargo ships and flying taxis to electric aircraft, who actually want more bugs not less. And they don’t just want a couple of bugs either, they want swarms of them and they want to be crawling all over the inside of the aircraft engines they make looking for and, eventually, fixing problems and doing routine engine maintenance. But these "bugs" they’re referring to aren't software glitches, they're tiny robots modelled after cockroaches and snakes that will scamper, “slither” and swarm over every part of the engines.
Rolls Royce announced their latest cockroach like maintenance bots at the Farnborough International Airshow and believe these tiny insect-inspired robots will save their maintenance engineers valuable time, up to 80 percent of their time, by serving as their eyes and hands within the tight confines of an airplane's engine.
See them in action
According to a report the company also plans to mount a camera on each bot to allow engineers to see what's going on inside an engine without have to take it apart and eventually they think they can even train their bots to complete repairs.
"They could go off scuttling around reaching all different parts of the combustion chamber," said Rolls Royce technology specialist James Cell said at the airshow, "if we did it conventionally it would take us five hours, with these little robots, who knows, it might take five minutes."
Rolls Royce created their prototypes with help from robotics experts at Harvard University and University of Nottingham, but even though they’re tiny they’re still too large to get into some of the nooks and crannies of the engines where the company think they’ll be the most useful.
Ultimately Rolls Royce wants to scale their robots down so they’re about half an inch tall and weigh just a few ounces which they think should be possible within the next couple of years, especially as we continue to see breakthroughs in the miniaturisation of everything from nanosized smartphone cameras and displays, which could soon be just atoms thick, and tiny computers that make even grains of rice look like skyscrapers by comparison.
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In the future we'll see more maintenance jobs performed by robots of all sizes.
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Matthew Griffin Founder, 311 Institute
Matthew Griffin is a multi-award winning Futurist and expert in Disruption and Innovation, Geopolitics, Leadership, and Technology, who NASA have described as a "walking encyclopaedia of the future" and a "futurist Polymath."
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Matthew Griffin is a multi-award winning Futurist and expert in Disruption and Innovation, Geopolitics, Leadership, and Technology, who NASA have described as a "walking encyclopaedia of the future" and a "futurist Polymath." 15-time best selling author of the "Codex of the Future" series, Matthew is the Founder and Futurist in Chief of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm working with royal households, world leaders, G7, G20, and G77 governments, NGOs, and multi-national mid and mega cap firms to help them explore, shape, and lead the next 50 years of business and society.
An award-winning YouTube creator with over a million followers, with an unrivalled global reach and impact, Matthew is a highly sought-after international keynote speaker, lecturer, and mentor who collaborates with global leaders through the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) and United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to shape pivotal initiatives such as the UN’s AI for Humanity program, the United Nations Conference of the Parties (UN COP), and the World Economic Forum in Davos.
As the former Global Head of Cloud, National Security, and Enterprise Sales for companies including Atos, Dell-EMC, and IBM, Matthew has a proven track record of building multi-billion dollar business units and turning failing divisions into market leaders. His ability to identify, analyse, and communicate the implications of hundreds of emerging technologies and trends is unparalleled, and his insights are trusted by many of the world’s most respected organisations, including ABB, Accenture, Adidas, AON, ARM, BCG, Centrica, Citi, Coca-Cola, Dentons, Deloitte, Dow Jones, EY, Google, KPMG, Lego, Legal & General, LinkedIn, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Qualcomm, RWE, Samsung, Siemens AG and Siemens Energy, T-Mobile, UBS, VISA, Walmart, Workday, Worldpay and many others.
Regularly featured in the global media including the AP, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Discovery, Forbes, Khaleej Times, Telegraph, TIME, ViacomCBS, WIRED, and the WSJ, Matthews mission is to help organisations create a fair and sustainable future whose benefits are shared by everyone irrespective of their ability, background, or circumstances.
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Sources and further reading
Source: first published by the 311 Institute on 29 July 2018. Cite as: Griffin, M. (2018). Rolls Royce is building cockroach like robots and snakes to fix airplane engines. 311 Institute. https://www.311institute.com/rolls-royce-building-cockroach-robots-snakes-to-fix-airplane-engines/
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