Abu Dhabi's Dexter Robotics Builds Climbing Robots for Large-Structure Upkeep
The Khalifa University spin-off, founded in 2023, builds the Cling platform to inspect, clean, paint and maintain large structures on land and underwater.
Karim El-Sayed Karim El-Sayed covers company news, policy and regulation across the UAE and wider MENA for Anecdoted, with a focus on how new rules and licences reshape how startups operate. karim@anecdoted.com
Dexter Robotics, an Abu Dhabi company in advanced manufacturing, was selected as a winner on a 2025 list of 100 companies to watch. It was founded in 2023 by a team that includes Prof. Bashar El-Khasawneh, Dr. Abdur Rosyid Patrum and Aamna Alshehhi, MSc.
The company builds robotic systems for inspecting, cleaning, painting and maintaining large structures — upkeep that is slow, costly and often hazardous when people do it at height or below the waterline. Dexter's stated aim is to make that work safer, faster and more efficient.
Inside the Cling platform
Cling, the flagship product, is built on symmetric parallel kinematics. The configuration delivers stiffness, accuracy and load capacity, and it is also what keeps the robot securely attached as it moves across vertical, overhead, inclined and underwater surfaces.
It holds on with modular suction cups and magnetic wheels, a pairing that covers ferrous and non-ferrous materials — broader than either method would manage alone. Tools are interchangeable, so one platform can serve several applications rather than one. Dexter describes Cling as affordable and portable.
Control is flexible: the machine can be driven remotely, programmed for a task or operated semi-autonomously. It comes in three specialized variants — Climbing, Heavy-Duty and IP68 Underwater, the last rated for submersion.
From Khalifa University to the exhibition floor
Dexter Robotics spun out of Khalifa University and joined the Khalifa Innovation Center (KIC) and Khalifa University Enterprises Company (KUEC), both based in Abu Dhabi. Prototypes have been demonstrated at GITEX, The Big 5, UMEX, XPANSE, Make it in the Emirates, COP28 and ALEC Innovation Day. The line-up spans trade shows, unmanned-systems exhibitions and the climate summit the UAE hosted.
Access is the hidden cost in large-structure maintenance. Reaching the surface that needs coating, cleaning or inspection usually means scaffolding, rope access or a dive team, and every trade that arrives on site brings its own setup time. A portable robot that climbs a tank wall or a hull, holds position on an overhead surface and then swaps tools for the next job compresses that overhead: one unit can be redeployed across tasks instead of a new crew being mobilised for each. Safety follows from the same shift, with the person who would have been on the rope line working the controls instead.
The three variants map onto that spread. Climbing covers everyday vertical work, the heavy-duty build is aimed at bigger loads, and the IP68 unit takes the same approach below the waterline, where access is hardest. For industrial asset owners in the Gulf, refineries, desalination plants and offshore platforms among them, the appeal is less about novelty than about how many tasks a single machine can absorb.
