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Schweizerischer Nationalfonds / Fonds national suisse
ANYbotics automates the inspection of oil rigs, wind farms and steel works. Co-founder and CEO Péter Fankhauser wants to turn the ETH Zurich spinoff into a global leader in the multi-billion industrial inspection business.
The ANYmal four-legged robot weighs 50 kilos, and is equipped with 14 motors, 12 joints, ten optical sensors, two microphones, two gas detectors, a thermal imaging camera and of course a power connection for the battery.
Péter Fankhauser picks up a testing station laptop and assigns the ANYmal a task via WiFi. It is instructed to climb up the four-metre-high scaffold that the ANYbotics team has built and read a gas pressure gauge. The robot gets its bearings and climbs up the steps. It photographs the display, captures a digital reading and then sends it to Fankhauser's laptop.
The ANYbotics CEO is visibly pleased with his creation. It is agile, robust and reliably performs the tasks assigned to it. "We're continuing a Swiss engineering tradition that dates back to the 19th century," says Fankhauser.
Indeed, the words 'made in Switzerland' have been a seal of quality since the days of major Swiss industrial figures, such as Johann Jakob Sulzer, Alfred Escher, Charles Brown and Walter Boveri. Today, the 10,000 or so businesses operating in the Swiss mechanical engineering, metal and electrical industries employ over 300,000 people, account for one third of Switzerland's export revenue, and contribute around seven percent of GDP.
Sought-after specialists
The sector faces huge pressure to innovate, however. The challenge lies in equipping devices and machinery with artificial intelligence (AI), operating it autonomously, and getting it to interact collaboratively with humans. "We are at the Nokia, or pioneer stage of development," says Péter Fankhauser, "the journey has only just begun."
This is why governments and companies are investing billions in the development of AI. Switzerland is able to keep pace largely thanks to its universities. The two Swiss federal institutes of technology (ETH Zurich and EPF Lausanne) in particular have an outstanding reputation in the international scientific community, as shown time and again in various rankings.
At ETH Zurich alone, over 200 talented students from all over the world earn a Master's degree in robotics every year. They are highly sought after in the job market and are one of the reasons why Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Boston Dynamics and Meta operate their own robotics and AI labs in and around Zurich.
Péter Fankhauser himself studied at ETH Zurich. He earned his doctorate with a thesis on perceptive locomotion for legged robots in rough terrain. Immediately afterwards, he set up ANYbotics with colleagues.
Rewarding robots
"We tried to translate the two major strengths of Swiss planning and control engineering into a commercial product," explains Fankhauser in his office in Zurich Oerlikon. He is referring to the targeted processing of optical data (computer vision) and planned locomotion in unfamiliar terrain.
At the time, the team was housed at Wyss Zurich, a joint start-up incubator of ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich funded by Swiss-American medtech billionaire Hansjörg Wyss. The first four-legged inspection robot was launched in 2019 but failed to meet the performance requirements.
"In the area of planned locomotion in particular, we were lagging behind competitors such as Boston Dynamics," explains Fankhauser. The saviour came from the Robotic Systems Lab at ETH Zurich headed by Marco Hutter, another ANYbotics co-founder.
Hutter integrated a reward-based learning software (Deep Reinforcement Learning) into a virtual reality model. The robot logs into this simulation, is given a goal and attempts to achieve it through trial and error. Progress is rewarded and failures are punished with point deductions.
The results caused a stir internationally as the Robotic Systems Lab had succeeded in reducing the learning phase for autonomous systems from days or weeks to just a few hours. The tool was launched in 2020. ANYbotics was the first user and effectively became the global technology leader overnight.
ANYmals never sleep
Since then, things have been running smoothly in Oerlikon. There are currently 200 legged robots in use. Customers include the oil company BP and Finnish steel manufacturer Outokumpu. These companies send their four-legged employees to places where humans would rather not venture. The ANYmals patrol systems around the clock, recording operating data in wind, rain or snow and reporting abnormalities.
ANYbotics has been operating a branch in San Francisco since November 2024. In May 2025, the company received the Export Award from Switzerland Global Enterprise (S-GE), the Swiss organisation for export and investment promotion. In September the start-up raised another 20 million Swiss francs in venture capital, bringing the total to over 120 million francs.
ANYmal X, the world's first robot for inspection in potentially explosive environments, will be available in 2026. The story behind it illustrates how the transfer of basic research into a marketable product drives value creation, both within the innovative company itself but also in the supply chain.
Flying sparks can be disastrous in gas or chemical plants. This is why specially developed bespoke batteries, ventilation systems and motors with explosion protection had to be developed for the ANYmal X. For the drive systems ANYbotics partnered with the Maxon Group. The company, which is headquartered in the Swiss canton of Obwalden, has opened a specialised lab - Maxon International Technology AG - in the building next door to ANYbotics.
"We're operating in an extensive network of suppliers, and innovation, sales and business partners," says Péter Fankhauser, underscoring the importance of an industrial ecosystem that also includes German subcontractor Zollner. The legged robots are manufactured in its Swiss factory.
While serial production is under way in Hombrechtikon in the canton of Zurich, Péter Fankhauser is already planning the next stages of development. In the medium term, the plan is for the ANYmal not only to carry out inspections but also to perform work tasks.
ANYbotics is laying the scientific and technical foundations in collaboration with the Robotics Systems Lab at ETH Zurich. A doctoral student is currently studying how a robotic arm should be designed to turn levers, operate switches and even tighten screws.
The text of this news, a download image and further information are available on the website of the Swiss National Science Foundation.