Volcano Exploration Robot History and Where ABB Fits

Some volcano science is still done by hand. When six new fissure vents opened at the summit of Kīlauea in Hawaii in September 2026, US Geological Survey geologists sampled the lava while it erupted by scooping it into a bucket of water, as they explained in a Volcano Watch column in October. Volcano exploration robots are meant to take people out of jobs like that. This post goes from the observers' cabins on the floor of Kīlauea's caldera, through Carnegie Mellon University's walking robot Dante II, to the drones that measure volcanic gas today, and looks at where ABB robots could fit.

A geologist collects a lava sample for chemical analysis from an active flow on Kīlauea with a rock hammer and a bucket of water, 2009. Photo: USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

How volcanologists worked at the crater rim

Close observation has a long history at Kīlauea. After a lecture in Honolulu in 1909, geologist Thomas Jaggar of MIT was approached by businessman Lorrin A. Thurston about building a full-time observatory there. In 1911 and 1912 small cabins went up on the floor of the caldera, next to the active vent of Halemaʻumaʻu, though they were hard to maintain. The Carnegie Institution paid for the first instruments and for Frank Perret's work in 1911, and MIT added $25,000 in 1912 for a more permanent building. That became the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, which watched eruptions from offices on the caldera rim until 2018.

An archive photo of Thomas A. Jaggar, founder of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, with his instruments, on display in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park. Photo: NPS via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Working close to active vents has cost lives. The French couple Katia and Maurice Krafft, known for filming and photographing volcanoes from within feet of lava flows, died in a pyroclastic flow on Mount Unzen in Japan on 3 June 1991. Two years later, eight volcanologists died in two separate events while sampling and monitoring volcanoes. Hot gas from fumaroles is among the most prized samples in volcano science, and it is among the hardest to collect.

USGS geologist Deborah Bergfeld collects a gas sample from a superheated fumarole at Lassen Volcanic National Park, California. Photo: USGS via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Carnegie Mellon's Field Robotics Center answered with machines that walk. Dante I and Dante II, developed in 1993 and 1994, were built to explore live volcanoes. In July 1994 Dante II, a tethered walker, went into the crater of Mount Spurr in the Aleutian Range of Alaska. With its cable anchored at the crater rim, it lowered itself down the steep walls in a kind of rappel to gather and analyse hot gases from the crater floor. The program had a second aim: to show that robots could explore harsh, steep and barren terrain like the surfaces of other planets.

Crater Peak, a satellite vent of Mount Spurr in Alaska, with the volcano's ice-covered summit behind, 1991. Photo: R. McGimsey, USGS via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Drones and robots at volcanoes today

Drones are what caught on; they have been used to monitor volcanoes for about 15 years. In 2017 a team of gas geochemists, volcanologists, physicists and engineers from Canada, Germany and Costa Rica spent two weeks testing drones at Turrialba and Masaya, Central America's two largest degassing volcanoes. They flew compact sensors into the plumes to measure carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide, and flew transects under the plume to measure sulfur dioxide flux, a job that usually meant a researcher driving or walking beneath it. Most of the scientists, as their report in Eos noted, doubled as drone pilots.

A view from a drone flying towards Volcán de Fuego in Guatemala to sample its plume gases, February 2017. Photo: Kieran Wood, University of Bristol / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

In July 2026 researchers from the Technical University of Munich tested a different idea on the island of Vulcano, off Sicily. A gas sensor on a tripod sends a laser beam through the plume to a drone, which reflects it back, so neither the drone nor the ground unit has to sit in the corrosive gas. In the 10 to 15 minutes the drone takes to fly a set path up to 60 meters away, software builds a map of gas concentration. A team from the University of Mainz used a drone carrying sensors to measure chemicals in the air. Gas composition can change before an eruption, Tjarda Roberts of France's CNRS told AFP, which is one reason to measure it.

Fumaroles and sulfur deposits on the Gran Cratere of Vulcano, Italy. Photo: Mozzihh / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

We found no ABB robot working on a volcano. The nearest fit is the lab where the samples end up. XtalPi uses more than 100 ABB GoFa cobots in automated workstations in Shanghai that open lids, handle liquids, add samples, filter and dilute, some of them inside glove boxes, and mobile robots carrying GoFa arms move samples from one station to the next. At the SLAS 2025 lab automation show, ABB demonstrated a GoFa handling pipettes and tending instruments in workflows typical of R&D and quality control labs.

ABB GoFa cobots on mobile bases at the automated laboratory ABB built with XtalPi in China. Photo: ABB

For the hot and dirty end of industry, ABB builds sealed versions of its arms. The IRB 1300 comes in IP67 and Foundry Plus 2 versions that seal all electrical components against heavy liquids and dust, and the Foundry Plus 2 version uses a stainless steel end effector so that washing away dust and metal debris does not make it rust. ABB offers it for die casting, sand casting, forging and machining, and its footprint is just 220 by 220 mm.

An ABB IRB 1300 in its Foundry Plus 2 version, sealed against liquids and dust, in a production cell. Photo: ABB

Where volcano exploration robots go next

Scientists now want gas measurements that are more accurate and carry no risk to the people taking them. At Kīlauea, which has erupted in episodes since 23 December 2024, scientists already track the magma system with tiltmeters, satellite positioning and radar satellites, and measure sulfur dioxide emissions of 1,000 to 5,000 tonnes a day. Drones that map gas from a distance add another early warning signal. For people at home, the payoff is in places like San José, Costa Rica, where ash bursts from Turrialba have disrupted the international airport and both of the big Central American gas emitters sit close to major cities.

A sulfur dioxide plume rising from Halemaʻumaʻu crater at Kīlauea, 2010. Photo: Ken Lund / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

We know of no observatory using ABB robots, so this part is a possibility. A sealed IRB 1300 could handle crushed rock or quenched lava samples in a dusty preparation room, and a GoFa could take over repetitive steps such as opening vials, diluting and filtering in a geochemistry lab, as it does for XtalPi. Such a cell would normally be tested in RobotStudio before it is built. The drones themselves come off production lines, which our post on drone manufacturing covers.

An ABB GoFa CRB 15000 cobot at an automated lab workstation built by ABB and XtalPi in China. Photo: ABB

Volcanic plumes are corrosive, which is why the Munich team keeps its sensor out of the gas: any instrument inside the plume would need constant recalibration. Drones have limits too: the Munich system is rated for altitudes up to 3,000 meters, and a tethered walker like Dante II needed its cable anchored at the crater rim. People still matter at every step, from the pilots who are also scientists to the geologists who walk up to a lava vent with a bucket when a fresh sample is needed.

A USGS geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory scoops fresh lava into a bucket of water to quench the sample, 2015. Photo: USGS via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

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