Derek Chase is Vice President of Robotics & AI at Nextpower. With more than 18 years in the solar industry, he founded OnSight Technology a Robotics and AI company focused on solar farm robotic inspection, acquired by Nextpower in 2025. Derek also serves as Co-Chair of the SEIA Operations & Maintenance Committee, helping advance industry best practices.
As robots move beyond controlled indoor environments and into agriculture, mining, construction, defense, ports, and critical infrastructure, the engineering challenges become significantly more demanding. Weather, dust, moisture, vibration, uneven terrain, and limited access to maintenance introduce failure modes rarely encountered during lab testing.
Drawing on years of experience supporting autonomous systems in some of the world's harshest environments, this panel will share practical lessons for designing, building, and deploying robots that can withstand real-world field conditions. Attendees will learn best practices for environmental hardening, power architecture, autonomous operations, charging infrastructure, reliability engineering, and long-term fleet maintenance.
Through real-world deployment examples, the session will demonstrate how engineering decisions impact reliability, uptime, operational efficiency, and total cost of ownership. Engineers will leave with practical strategies for building resilient robotic systems that can operate reliably despite exposure to rain, dust, extreme temperatures, vibration, and other environmental challenges.
