Aerospace engineering company Lockheed Martin Corp has created a small, spider-like robot that is designed to track down and repair leaks in the company’s massive Hybrid Airships.

Lockheed Martin’s airships, which are essentially high tech blimps, are meant to transport heavy loads, such as construction equipment, to remote locations that do not have roads. The Hybrid Airships can move payloads weighing up to 47,000 lbs along with up to 19 passengers.

According to Lockheed Martin, these airships provide a perfect balance between speed and fuel efficiency, and they are designed to “maximize simplicity and toughness.” Of course, even the toughest materials can suffer from wear and tear, and tracking down pinhole leaks in a building-sized balloon is not exactly easy. That is where the company’s new robot, SPIDER, comes in.

Developed by Lockheed Martin’s famous Skunk Works research division, the same department that created the U-2 spy plane and the SR-71 Blackbird jet, SPIDER is roughly the size of a loaf of bread and is capable of crawling along the surface of the airship and tracking down even the smallest leaks.

SPIDER is actually a combination of two units that are positioned both inside and outside of the envelope, airship’s fabric exterior. The unit on the outside shines a bright light through the envelope, which the unit on the inside uses to scan for leaks. It then repairs the leak and sends a before and after image to the control center to verify the fix. If one of the robots suffers a failure, Lockheed says that the search patterns of the other units can be adjust in real time to make up for the loss.

You can watch a video of Lockheed Martin’s new robot in action below:

Image courtesy of Lockheed Martin Corp