ANYbotics has started shipping ANYmal X, which it calls the first legged inspection robot built to operate safely inside explosive atmospheres, to oil, gas and chemical customers including Equinor and DSM-Firmenich. The robot carries an ATEX EU-type examination certificate covering Zones 1 and 2, meaning it can legally walk into areas where a single spark could trigger an explosion.
What makes a robot safe to use in an explosive atmosphere?
ANYmal X was engineered around 12 leg actuators sealed in flameproof casings, with its onboard AI computer housed in a nitrogen-filled sealed chamber and conductive feet designed to ground the robot rather than build up static charge. An independent notified body, Bureau Veritas, examined the design and certified it to ATEX standards for Gas Group IIB, temperature class T4, Category 2G, as well as the global IECEx standard. ANYbotics CTO Andrea Corda summarized the engineering challenge as asking, for every component, "which credible event could create an ignition source, and how do we make sure it never does."
The robot also carries thermal, visual, acoustic and gas sensors to do the inspection work itself, and can navigate stairs and narrow walkways without any modification to existing facilities. ANYbotics says it took four years of engineering and resulted in more than ten patents.
Who has actually tested it, and how extensively?
This isn't a lab prototype. BP, Equinor, Shell, PETRONAS, Petrobras, BASF and SLB have been running ANYmal X in an early access program since 2023, across hundreds of onshore and offshore missions. That multi-year, multi-operator testing cycle is unusually long for a robotics product launch, reflecting how conservative the oil and gas sector is about putting any unproven hardware into zones where a malfunction could be catastrophic.
ANYbotics, SLB and Kuwait Oil Company plan to give ANYmal X its first public demonstration at ADIPEC 2026, the industry's major annual event, shortly after this delivery announcement.
Why does this matter beyond one robot model?
ANYbotics already runs more than 120,000 autonomous inspections a month for over 50 power, metals and materials customers using its existing ANYmal line, built on its Shift Operations Platform that integrates with SAP, Yokogawa and SLB systems. ANYmal X extends that business into zones the standard robot was never allowed to enter, which the company estimates covers a meaningful share of the roughly $102 billion global oil, gas and chemical inspection market.
The economic case is straightforward: preventable downtime costs Fortune 500 companies an estimated $1.4 trillion a year, and a single hour of unplanned downtime in oil and gas can run up to $500,000. Extraction workers also face a fatality rate roughly seven times the national average, so routing routine inspection rounds through hazardous zones to a robot instead of a technician addresses both a cost problem and a safety problem at once.
How does this fit into the broader industrial robotics market?
ANYbotics, founded in 2016 as a spinout from ETH Zurich and now running roughly 200 employees across Zurich, San Francisco and Barcelona on more than $150 million in funding, is competing in a legged-robot inspection category that includes Boston Dynamics' Spot and other quadrupeds increasingly aimed at industrial sites rather than research labs. ATEX certification for explosive atmospheres is a narrower, harder-to-reach niche than general warehouse or factory inspection, and it is one most competitors have not yet cracked, giving ANYbotics a specific wedge into a high-value, safety-critical slice of industrial automation.