Facebook has robots patrolling its data centers and has built a new team focused on automating the multibillion-dollar facilities

• Facebook has built a fleet of robots to patrol its data centers.
• The company also has an internal team called the Site Engineering Robotics Team dedicated to building robotics for its data center facilities.
• Other companies are also exploring data center robotics, but it's relatively early days - Facebook's efforts could help revolutionize the industry if they succeed.
• Job listing and patents reviewed by Business Insider give clues to what the Facebook's engineers are thinking about in the space.

There are robots on the prowl at Facebook's server farms.

The social networking giant has quietly built a fleet of mobile robots to patrol its data centers, and now has a team dedicated to automating its vast network of facilities around the globe, Business Insider has learned. The high-tech initiative could boost the firm's profits and help revolutionize the data center industry - and potentially prompt job losses around the country.

As Facebook has grown, it has built out a sprawling network of data centers around the globe dedicated to hosting users' content and supporting its apps and services. Its locations now stretch from Oregon to Sweden to Singapore - but maintaining the vast facilities requires human data center operators and engineers to manage the systems, replace malfunctioning drives, and so on.

Business Insider examined public documentation including job postings and patents to learn more about Facebook's robotic ambitions in the data center space. Reached for comment, a company spokesperson confirmed that the company had built robots to assist its engineers.

"Facebook began a program to explore the use of mobile platforms for use by engineers in data center locations," spokesperson Melanie Roe said. "These units assist our engineers as they monitor and measure conditions inside data centers. As of today, we have deployed units to targeted locations." (In the context of robotics, "mobile platforms" refer to a kind of robot capable of movement.)

The robots "allow our engineers to see, hear, and measure conditions" inside data centers, she added, and they started being used "at a few sites within the last 12 months." She declined to share images of the robots.

A dedicated in-house, robot-building team

Facebook also has a new, previously undisclosed team working on data center automation: The "Site Engineering Robotics Team." The first public job listings for the team first appeared in May 2019, according to an analysis of old Facebook job postings by data analysis firm Thinknum on behalf of Business Insider, and the number of average openings has grown from then from around two to six, indicating that the team is growing.

The purpose of the team, according to one job listing, is to "design and [develop] robotics solutions to automate and scale Facebook's data center infrastructure operations."

There are currently numerous open roles for the team. For example, It is seeking a systems engineer to work on robotics engineering with a degree in mechatronics, electrical engineering, or similar, as well as experience in "large and complex system design experience, including Robotics, Industrial automation, consumer electronics" and knowledge of data centers.

And a mechanical design engineer - ideally one with "experience in aerospace, medical devices, precision mechanism development, or robotics" - will work on prototyping new hardware and turning concepts into "low-to-mid volume production" projects. Facebook is also looking for a PhD intern to work on robotics front-end engineering that will work on software related to robotics (with interests in "front end and back end robot software applications, data visualization, fleet management, and human-robot interaction") and with experience working on platforms for controlling robotics like ROS.

A robotics and autonomous systems engineer, meanwhile, will be tasked with "challenging problems like robot software application development, manipulation, data communication and processing, hardware sensing enablement, robot localization, navigation, and obstacle avoidance." (Experience in "robot control systems," "computer vision," and robot arms" is a plus.)

All this adds up to a growing team looking to develop data center robotics from multiple different angles - from hardware and developing the physical machines to writing the software that will power them.

Facebook has pioneered data center industry shifts before

Facebook isn't the first company to have explored robotics in connection to data centers.

Google has used robots to destroy old hard drives in its facilities, and IBM has used modified roomba bots to monitor temperature. Facebook has also used robots for small parts of its operations for several years - in 2014, the company debuted a new cold storage unit that utilized some robotics - but the company's current hiring seemingly indicates more ambitious plans.

"A few companies have deployed robotic solutions for specific operating functions within the data center, however there are no widely used solutions at this time, as this requires a great amount of resources and capital," said Chearine Pringle, a data center professional and electrical engineer.

"It is also notable that they are hiring a team for these solutions which is something other companies outsource to firms specializing in robotics and automation. It shows they are very serious about implementing these solutions and becoming an industry leader in data center robotics."

Facebook has taken the lead in industry-redefining data center practices before. In 2011, it spearheaded the Open Compute Project, a plan to design data centers along open source principles - an initiative that is now also followed by companies including Google, Microsoft, Cisco, and Alibaba.

The company has also touted its sustainability efforts on data centers. It says its facilities are 80% more water-efficient than a typical data center, and that "in 2020, we will have committed to enough new renewable energy resources to match 100% of the energy used by every data center built by Facebook, and always in the same state or power grid as the data center itself."

It has spent billions of dollars on its network of data centers over the years. "Among all of the hyperscale operators, Facebook is the fourth biggest investor in data centers, behind Amazon, Google and Microsoft," said John Dinsdale, the chief analyst at Synergy Research Group. "It currently has over 20 major data centers in operation with well over 20 more at various stages of construction or planning. For the fifth year in succession, Facebook aggressively grew its data center spending in 2019 and its planned capex for 2020 is likely to be up another 15% from 2019.

"So it has impressive scale and a lot of operational smarts - and it is not afraid of pushing the envelope in terms of how it does things."

Facebook's robot patents offer more clues

Facebook seems to be thinking more broadly than "mobile platforms" alone.

Patents filed by employees of the company give clues as to other problems the company is exploring about in relation to automation - namely replacing modules from data center racks.

It's important to note that a patent doesn't necessarily mean that what it shows is being actively developed (or ever will be) - but taken with other information, they can offer a window into what a company's employees are thinking about.

In 2019, the company was granted a permit for a gantry robot that could remove modules from a data center rack.

And another, also from 2019, is for a device including a robot arm to move modules about.

Facebook is exploring robotics in other fields too. Facebook Reality Labs (FRL), its research unit, is exploring various forms of robotics technology, including "soft robotics" - flexible robots that move and act like living organisms.

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