Over the past few years, smart manufacturing initiatives such as digital twins and the internet of things (IoT) has caused Industry 4.0 – the trend toward digital transformation in manufacturing and industrial sectors – to explode. However, robots and drones tasked with visually inspecting machines haven’t yet seen the same growth. That is set to change in a big way, Bill Ray, vice president and analyst, emerging technologies and trends at Gartner, told VentureBeat. The robots, drones and cameras that inspect machines to perform predictive maintenance and relay analog information to operations staff can now function autonomously. Even better – the longer they’re at their jobs, the better they do.