ROBOTICS & AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS · SWITZERLAND
ANYbotics
Four-legged robots that take over industry's hardest inspection rounds
Original schematic illustration · created for the Atlas — stylised technical drawing, not a photograph.
01 In brief
ANYbotics is a Zurich robotics company founded in 2016 as a spin-off of ETH Zurich, built to turn a decade of legged-robot research at the university into industrial products. Its robot ANYmal walks on four legs, climbs stairs, crosses grating, gravel and mud, and inspects industrial facilities autonomously — recording thermal images, sounds and gas readings on regular patrol routes.
The company's customer list reads like an industrial who's-who — Equinor and Siemens Energy among them — and its robots now work in energy plants, substations, mines and chemical sites where routine inspection is dull, distant or dangerous. In late 2026 ANYbotics launched ANYmal X, an inspection version certified for explosive atmospheres in the oil, gas and chemical industries.
02 Why it's interesting
- 01 Legs go where wheels and tracks cannot: stairs, ladders, grated walkways and cluttered plant floors — the standard terrain of heavy industry.
- 02 The robots make inspection repeatable and data-driven: the same route, the same sensors, the same quality of record, every shift, without sending a person into hazardous zones.
- 03 It is one of ETH Zurich's most visible spin-off stories — laboratory research (published in leading robotics journals) walking out of the lab and onto refinery floors within a few years.
- 04 The company treats autonomy, not teleoperation, as the default: the robot plans, perceives and decides on site, with humans supervising fleets rather than joysticks.
03 How it works
ANYmal is a platform that combines legged locomotion, industrial sensing and autonomous software.
Mechanically, the robot is a quadruped with actuated hip and knee joints per leg, giving it the freedom to choose footholds and postures. Its gait and balance controllers — refined with reinforcement-learning methods developed together with ETH Zurich — let it recover from pushes, slip on wet steel and climb industrial stairs.
For inspection work, ANYmal carries a sensor head: visual cameras, thermal imaging, acoustic sensing and gas detection. On a patrol it localizes itself in a pre-built map, follows its route, finds the measurement points (a gauge, a valve, a bearing) and records readings the same way each time, so that subtle changes over weeks become visible.
The software layer integrates the results into customers' maintenance and control systems, turning rounds into trend data — and letting one operator supervise many robots across sites.
| Founded | 2016 (ETH Zurich spin-off; first sales 2017) |
|---|---|
| Platform | ANYmal · ANYmal X (explosive-atmosphere version, 2026) |
| Team | ~200 staff (Zurich, Barcelona, San Francisco) |
| Funding raised | > USD 150 million |
| Reference customers | Equinor, Siemens Energy, and others |
Company figures per ANYbotics and Innovation Park Zurich (2026).
04 The organisation behind it
ANYbotics AG grew out of ETH Zurich's robotics research — the Robotic Systems Lab of Professor Marco Hutter and its network — and retains close research ties to the university. The company is venture-backed, with a team spanning Switzerland, Spain and the USA.
05 In the real world
Autonomous inspection in the process industries: oil and gas, chemicals, power generation and distribution, cement and metals. The value is threefold — safety (fewer people in hazardous zones), coverage (no round skipped) and data quality (consistent, comparable measurements over time). ANYmal X extends this to areas where explosive atmospheres demand certified equipment.
06 Can you visit?
The company's premises are offices and robot-testing space, not a public attraction — so this is one archive you experience indirectly. ANYmal appears regularly at trade fairs, conferences and demonstration events in Switzerland and abroad.
For robotics enthusiasts, the practical route is watching for public demos and exhibitions (e.g. at Swiss tech and innovation events) or studying the company's published field reports.