ANYbotics

ANYbotics
Name	ANYbotics
Type	Private
Industry	Robotics
Founded	2016
Founders	["Arianna Rossi","Maximilian Hutter","Daniela Weber"]
Headquarters	Zurich, Switzerland
Products	ANYmal
Employees	200–500

ANYbotics

ANYbotics is a Swiss robotics company specializing in quadrupedal mobile robots for industrial inspection and autonomy. The firm develops hardware, perception software, and autonomy stacks for unstructured environments, and it operates alongside a network of universities, industrial partners, and energy firms. Its work intersects with advances in locomotion, computer vision, and field robotics deployed across global infrastructure, oil and gas, mining, and research sectors.

History

The company was founded in Zurich in 2016 by engineers and researchers formerly affiliated with the ETH Zurich, Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, Imperial College London and the National Robotics Consortium. Early development drew on legged locomotion research from the Legged Locomotion Lab, collaborations with the Swiss National Science Foundation and spinouts connected to the ETH spin-off program. By 2017 the team showcased prototypes at events including CES, Mobile World Congress, and the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Growth rounds involved investors from the European Investment Bank, corporate venture arms of Siemens and ABB, and private equity linked to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Field trials progressed through partnerships with utility companies such as Enel, EDF, and E.ON, and with oil and gas operators like Shell and BP for offshore and onshore demonstrations.

Products and Technology

The flagship platform is a quadruped robot designed for payload modularity, autonomy, and sensor fusion, competing in capability with systems from Boston Dynamics and research platforms developed at Stanford University and ETH Zurich. Key subsystems include a real-time locomotion controller influenced by work from the Dynamic Legged Systems Group and perception stacks leveraging algorithms from Google DeepMind, OpenAI research threads, and sensor suites comparable to those used by Waymo and Tesla Autopilot. The robot integrates LiDAR units from suppliers akin to Velodyne, depth cameras similar to Intel RealSense, thermal imaging from firms like FLIR Systems, and inertial measurement from vendors comparable to Analog Devices. Onboard compute is engineered to support simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) approaches pioneered at Oxford Robotics Institute and the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute, and uses middleware compatible with ROS ecosystems.

Applications and Deployments

Deployments span inspection routines in nuclear power plants operated by entities such as Électricité de France and Kernkraftwerk Leibstadt, subsea and topside surveys for Equinor and TotalEnergies, and mining site reconnaissance with partners like Rio Tinto and BHP. Robots have been trialed for emergency response alongside Swiss Air-Rescue>

and municipal services tied to Zurich Cantonal Police demonstrations, and used in construction monitoring for firms including Skanska and Bouygues projects. Research collaborations led to experiments in planetary analog sites coordinated with groups like ESA and the European Space Agency analogue programs, and comparative studies with academic labs at ETH Zurich, University of Cambridge, and University of Tokyo.

Corporate Structure and Funding

The company is privately held with venture capital and strategic corporate investors, including technology conglomerates similar to Siemens and ABB, and institutional backers such as the European Investment Fund. It has raised multiple funding rounds supported by venture firms linked to the Swiss Startup Group and international corporate venture arms. Executive leadership includes founders with academic backgrounds from ETH Zurich and management hires drawn from Google, Microsoft robotics units, and industrial automation divisions of Siemens. The firm operates research facilities in Zurich and maintains regional partnerships across North America, Europe, and Asia.

Research, Partnerships, and Collaborations

Academic collaborations involve laboratories at ETH Zurich, Carnegie Mellon University, Imperial College London, University of Oxford, and Delft University of Technology. Industry alliances include pilots with Siemens Energy, ABB Robotics, Schlumberger, and Baker Hughes. Standardization and consortium activity have engagement with organizations such as the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, ISO technical committees on robotics, and the Open Connectivity Foundation. Cross-disciplinary projects have connected the company to climate-related initiatives with UNEP and infrastructure resilience programs funded by the World Bank.

Safety, Regulation, and Ethics

Safety frameworks for deployment are informed by certification standards aligned with ISO 13482-type guidelines and industrial safety practices adopted by Occupational Safety and Health Administration-influenced regimes in the United States and European Commission directives. Ethical considerations are discussed in forums alongside IEEE, ACM and policy groups at OECD addressing automation and workforce impacts. Privacy and data governance practices follow models proposed by European Data Protection Supervisor and compliance strategies mirroring General Data Protection Regulation implementations, especially when operating on private industrial premises.

Category:Robotics companies