ZÆTHER partnered with HiveMQ to transform Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot into “Stella”, a fully integrated, AI-powered mobile platform for industrial inspections, data collection, and autonomous operations. By combining on-robot processing with real-time data streaming, Stella gives life sciences and other industrial companies a flexible way to monitor assets, detect issues earlier, and automate complex inspection routines. HiveMQ provides the event-driven backbone that makes this intelligence possible.
Why Life Sciences Needed an Autonomous Inspection Solution
Life sciences manufacturers are under pressure to increase efficiency, standardize processes, and improve safety, yet many plants still rely on manual walkdowns and clipboards to capture critical equipment and environmental data. This creates blind spots in reliability, maintenance, and compliance, especially in complex processes such as monoclonal antibody production where repetitive, non–value-add tasks consume expert time.
At the same time, the industry has been slow to adopt Industrial IoT (IIoT) technologies. Fixed sensors can’t cover every asset or area, and traditional architectures make it difficult to move high-frequency data from the plant floor into modern analytics platforms.
ZÆTHER saw an opportunity to use mobile robotics as a catalyst for IIoT adoption. With Stella, they wanted to show that a robot can act as a “walking IIoT device” - moving autonomously through a plant, collecting rich data, and streaming it into an enterprise data architecture in real time. To do that, they needed a communication layer that could:
Run directly on Stella’s on-board NVIDIA computer and operate reliably at the edge
Bridge from the robot into a site-wide architecture in their Customer Experience Center (CEC), which mimics a full production environment
Stream data into cloud and analytics platforms such as Snowflake using modern, event-driven patterns
Demonstrate enterprise-grade security, governance, and extensibility that matches regulated industries like pharma
Traditional integration approaches were too brittle and limited to support this vision. ZÆTHER needed a lightweight yet powerful MQTT-based platform that could turn Stella into a credible, repeatable IIoT reference for life sciences plants.
Building Stella, a Walking IIoT Device for Life Sciences Operations
ZÆTHER selected the HiveMQ Platform as the messaging and orchestration layer for Stella’s robotic intelligence system. HiveMQ runs both:
On Stella as a broker deployed on the robot’s on-board NVIDIA single-board computer, handling local telemetry, sensor data, and control commands at the edge
In the CEC environment as a site-wide broker that represents the plant-level architecture in ZÆTHER’s Customer Experience Center
Using HiveMQ’s bridging capabilities, ZÆTHER connects the broker on Stella to the broker in the CEC, creating a seamless edge-to-cloud data path. As Stella moves through a simulated plant environment, she continuously publishes telemetry, environmental readings, and inspection data to HiveMQ, which then streams that data into other applications and platforms.
With HiveMQ’s enterprise extensions, ZÆTHER can further enrich this architecture by:
Sending data into analytics platforms such as Snowflake
Demonstrating secure, authenticated connectivity and fine-grained access control
Exploring the use of HiveMQ Data Hub for IIoT stream governance, transformation, and routing into cloud services
This setup allows ZÆTHER to show customers a complete, modern IIoT pipeline: Stella collects data on the plant floor, HiveMQ brokers it reliably and securely, and enterprise systems consume it for monitoring, analysis, and future AI models. The same architecture can be extended to a small fleet of robots and to real customer plants, not just the CEC.
Transforming IIoT Adoption with Autonomous Industrial Robotics
Stella, powered by HiveMQ, is helping ZÆTHER turn the idea of IIoT in life sciences from an abstract concept into a tangible, walkable reality.
In their Customer Experience Center, ZÆTHER uses Stella as a flagship demonstration of how:
A mobile robot can safely perform remote inspections and data collection around critical equipment
Real-time data can be streamed from the plant floor into enterprise systems without custom, brittle integrations
Modern architectures can support future advanced use cases, including AI-driven anomaly detection and predictive maintenance
The combination of Stella and HiveMQ gives ZÆTHER a powerful way to accelerate digital conversations with life sciences manufacturers. Instead of talking about IIoT in theory, they can show a working reference architecture where a robot navigates autonomously, acts as a rich data source, and feeds a standardized, event-driven data pipeline.
Internally, this architecture provides a foundation ZÆTHER can reuse and extend. As they move from a single robot toward scenarios with multiple robots and additional plants, HiveMQ’s clustering, bridging, and extensions give them a clear path to scale without redesigning the integration pattern for each new deployment.
By pairing mobile robotics with HiveMQ’s enterprise MQTT platform, ZÆTHER is creating a next-generation industrial intelligence solution - one that helps life sciences manufacturers automate repetitive tasks, gather more and better data, and prepare for a future where robots and IIoT work together to improve safety, reliability, and operational performance.
