Beyond 3D: Tech companies partner on drone-powered ‘extended reality’ to reduce plane maintenance times

A robotics company and a defense contractor have teamed up for a high-tech fix to the military’s aircraft maintenance problem. Gecko Robotics and L3Harris announced Wednesday they will use drones to take thousands of images of aircraft and build digital twins, leading to much faster turnaround times for maintenance. The time it takes to fix or do preventative maintenance on U.S. military aircraft has been growing longer and longer as the aircraft age, resulting in ever-lower readiness