By: Sean Guerre, Energy Drone and Robotics Coalition
From refineries and renewables to pipelines and offshore platforms, drones, robotic, and intelligent systems drive efficiency, safety and sustainability at scale for the energy industry. On November 12, 2025, at The Ion in Houston, more than 200 leaders from energy, utilities, and robotics gathered for the Energy Drone & Robotics Coalition’s “AI & Automation in Energy” Forum to tackle industry’s most pressing question head-on: how to integrate and scale these technologies effectively.
The event brought together the brightest minds and boldest innovators shaping how AI and automation continue to redefine industrial operations for a full day of groundbreaking insights, practical takeaways, and real-world stories from the front lines of digital transformation.
Walking through The Ion that morning, you could feel the energy in the room (and not the kind that comes from hydrocarbons!) This was the electricity of ideas colliding, of operators who’ve been in the trenches meeting innovators who’ve been in the lab, of problems finally meeting solutions. The conversations before the keynote even began signaled the day would be technical, substantive and refreshingly candid. And the forum delivered exactly what the industry needed: strategy meeting implementation, where the promise of AI-driven automation became tangible operational reality.
Where Embodied AI Is Taking Us
As Nic Radford took the stage to deliver the opening keynote, within minutes, it became clear why he was the perfect person to set the tone. As CEO and Co-Founder of Persona AI and former NASA robotics lead, Radford has spent decades at the bleeding edge of humanoid and autonomous technology. His keynote, “Where Are We Going With Embodied AI?” moved well beyond the theoretical. He grounded the conversation in what’s actually possible now.
With over $500 million raised to advance intelligent robotic systems, Radford shared insights from building robots that have worked everywhere from the International Space Station to manufacturing floors. He talked about the convergence of AI and physical robotics, about systems that can learn, adapt and operate in environments too dangerous or complex for humans. More importantly, he talked about the practical challenges of deployment at scale—the gap between a successful pilot and enterprise-wide implementation. It was a keynote that felt like a strategy session.
Individual Sessions From the Front Lines of Implementation
The day’s speaker lineup read like a who’s who of industrial AI and automation. Practitioners with scars and stories provided us with hardfought lessons learned.While their titles were impressive, the substance of their comments were even more so.
Jonathan Alexander, Global Manufacturing AI & Advanced Analytics Manager at Albemarle, walked through how his team uses enterprise AI and machine learning to enhance efficiency, quality and reliability across global operations. But he didn’t sugarcoat the challenges. He ranked integrating AI into legacy systems, building trust with operators on the ground and proving return on investment (ROI) to skeptical finance teams high among them. He also discussed the results, measurable improvements in uptime, quality control that catches defects before they become failures and a path forward that other manufacturers can actually follow.
Providing a founder’s perspective on the evolution of fully autonomous drone operations, Nitin Gupta, Founder and CEO of FlytBase, discussed how energy and utility companies have started to move beyond manual drone flights to truly autonomous missions. These systems can launch, execute and return without human intervention. More importantly, he talked about ROI in concrete terms. How long does it take to see payback? What does “autonomous” really mean in a regulatory environment that’s still catching up? How do you scale from one facility to a hundred? (See prior AG coverage of Gupta’s keynote on AI and autonomy at this year’s EDR Summit).
In an industry drowning in data but starved for insights, Dr. Matthew Alberts from Southern Company shared how his organization continues to build the infrastructure, both technical and organizational, to turn information into intelligence. He anchored his session in the foundations that make everything else possible (data and ROI strategies for AI in energy) and his message was clear: before you can deploy sophisticated AI, get your data house in order first. (See Guerre’s prior AG contribution that discusses how Southern Company and other energy companies leverage AI and autonomy in the sector).
Steven Treviño, Deepwater Robotics Engineer at Shell, took attendees somewhere most will never go, to the ocean floor. His session on subsea and offshore robotics explored automation in extreme environments where human access is limited, expensive and dangerous. He discussed the next generation of underwater systems that can inspect, maintain and repair critical infrastructure thousands of feet below the surface. While it sounds like science fiction, these systems operate right now and today. Treviño shared his perspective on the breakthroughs and the bottlenecks.
Finally, Tim Dykstra and Chris McCasky from Nascent Scale wrapped up the speaker sessions with a practical roadmap for the “Automation Age.” They walked through the journey from pilot projects to enterprise integration, covering the organizational, technical and cultural changes required to scale automation successfully. Their framework provided attendees with a field manual of sorts, something they could actually use on Monday morning.
Show Stopping In Depth Panels
The individual sessions provided depth, whereas the panel discussions provided breadth. Two panels in particular stood out, not just for the topics, but for the quality of the conversation.
“From Reactive to Proactive: The AI Playbook for Zero Downtime” brought together Jonathan Alexander from Albemarle, Dhiraj Dhule (Director of Products at Flytbase), and Michael Hull from Vistra’s Technology Services. This panel tackled unplanned downtime, one of the most expensive problems in energy operations. The discussion moved quickly from philosophical (e.g., why predictive maintenance matters) to intensely practical:
- How do you train models when failure data is sparse?
- How do you convince operations teams to trust AI recommendations?
- What does “zero downtime” actually mean in practice, and is it even achievable?
What made this panel exceptional was the willingness to discuss failures alongside successes. Alexander talked about early AI models that produced too many false positives, which eroded trust with field teams. Dhule shared lessons from drone deployments where the technology worked perfectly, but organizational readiness levels were not there. Hull discussed the challenge of integrating multiple AI systems across a diverse fleet of power generation assets. These war stories cause the audience to lean in.
The panel on “What’s Now & Next in BVLOS for Energy: Preparing for FAA Part 108” addressed perhaps the most timely regulatory challenge facing the industry. Kellen Kirk from PG&E, Nate Ernst (Founder and President of Tactien), Andrew Aubrey, Senior Advisor, Skyways and Will Wheeler from Southern Company dove into the complexities of beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone operations, what some refer to as “the holy grail” of autonomous aerial inspection.
The fascinating conversation balanced technical capability with regulatory reality. The technology to fly drones autonomously over miles of pipeline or transmission lines already exists. But Part 108, the FAA’s evolving framework for BVLOS operations, creates new compliance requirements that operators need to understand now. Kirk shared PG&E’s experience navigating state regulations on top of federal requirements. Wheeler discussed Southern Company’s strategy for scaling drone operations across multiple states with different regulatory environments. Ernst brought an operator’s perspective on what Part 108 will actually require and how companies should be preparing today. (See Ernst’s prior AG contribution on Part 108 and implications for the energy sector).
A roadmap for using the regulatory evolution as an opportunity to build better, safer, more effective drone programs from the ground up. While the panel didn’t shy away from frustration with regulatory pace, it emphasized the importance of getting those regulations right.
The Tech, The People and The Takeaways
As with most live events, the forum’s real value showed up in the conversations between sessions, at lunch, and around the solutions showcase. The attendee list reflected the full spectrum of the energy ecosystem:
- Oil and gas operators wrestling with aging infrastructure
- Utility leaders managing the grid transition
- Renewable energy companies scaling rapidly
- Robotics innovators pushing technological boundaries
- AI experts solving complex industrial problems
- Solution providers trying to understand what the market actually needs
These weren’t just networking conversations in the traditional sense, where people swap cards and make small talk in some huge expo hall. These were substantive exchanges between people facing similar challenges. For this reason and more, the day delivered on its core promise: proven strategies, measurable results and lessons learned directly from practitioners. Attendees left with deployment frameworks that have worked in real facilities, an understanding of where autonomous systems actually deliver ROI, connections to peers solving similar problems and practical next steps for their own automation programs.
Throughout the day, solution providers also showcased the tech including the latest in robotics, drones, data platforms and AI systems. Companies such as Impac Systems Engineering, Frontier Precision Unmanned, Hibot, Pyxis Group, DroneDeploy, FlytBase, and BKO Services demonstrated technology use cases that ranged from aerial drones for transmission line inspection to ground-based robots for confined space operations, from data visualization platforms to AI-powered predictive maintenance systems. They all showcased hands-on conversations about real-world applications, such as when engineers crowded around a ruggedized inspection robot, discussing ingress protection ratings and battery life.
The shift in mindset was perhaps more valuable than any specific insight or piece of tech. People arrived asking “should we be doing this?” and left asking “how fast can we scale this?” The forum showcased what’s possible, and more importantly, demonstrated what’s already working, what the barriers actually are and how organizations can overcome them.
Looking Ahead
The 2025 Energy Drone & Robotics Forum proved to be a milestone moment for an industry in transformation. For organizations involved in asset inspection, maintenance, data collection, safety or operations, the event reshaped thinking about what’s possible and, more importantly, what’s practical.
As attendees filed out of The Ion that evening, the conversations continued. Contact information was exchanged, follow-up meetings scheduled, pilot projects sparked. The energy sector’s automation revolution isn’t just coming—it’s already here! And based on what happened in Houston on November 12th, you can bet your bottom dollar, it’s accelerating.
Interested in learning more about AI and automation in energy? Contact the Energy Drone & Robotics Coalition for information about future events like the 10th Anniversary Summit, June 22-24, 2026 and resources.