In some of the world's most dangerous industrial environments, including oil refineries, offshore wind platforms, cement plants and chemical plants, human access is often severely restricted, high risk or excessively costly.

ANYbotics, a Swiss robotics company, has delved into this space with the vision of creating a safer future for industrial inspection, in which robots act as autonomous members of the inspection team and carry out inspection operations integrated into maintenance workflows. ANYbotics, a Swiss robotics company, is committed to this task with the vision of creating a safer future for industrial inspection. A future where robots act as autonomous members of the inspection team and seamlessly integrate inspection operations into asset maintenance operations.

This vision finds its concrete implementation in “ANYmal”: a four-legged inspection robot that was specifically designed for use in heavy industry.

“Unlike general-purpose robotics platforms, ANYmal is designed to operate in “large, dirty, dusty and dangerous” areas,” says Nicole Zingg, director of technology partnerships at ANYbotics, places where stairs, corrosion, heat and unreliable connectivity are not exceptions but the norm.

“But hardware,” adds Zingg, “is just one piece of the puzzle that makes ANYmal an indispensable helper for customers.”

Inspection robotics – it’s about data

“We are building a hardware platform,” explains Zingg, “but inspection robotics is primarily about consistent and reliable data.”

ANYmal navigates independently through industrial facilities and collects data that goes far beyond what a human alone could collect. The walking robot doesn't just carry out a visual inspection. Its sensors also collect multimodal data. Using thermal imaging technology, ultrasound and acoustic sensors, it is able to locate leaks, measure gas concentrations and detect anomalies. These observations are incorporated into what ANYbotics calls “inspection intelligence”. The collected data provides actionable information. The result: longer operating times and lifecycles of the assets and, most importantly, significantly safer working conditions for people.

The use of ANYmal can have far-reaching effects on operational processes. “One customer in the offshore wind energy industry used ANYmal to perform all inspections, eliminating the need to deploy staff to a remote platform for months at a time,” says Zingg. When human intervention was finally required, the data collected by ANYmal from previous inspections made all the difference. The customer already knew exactly what was wrong, which expert to send, and what equipment to bring. This made it possible to avoid costly and risky site visits that would otherwise only be based on assumptions.

However, it is not enough for ANYbotics to provide this information. They also need to be integrated into the software systems used by customers.

“ANYbotics must be deployed natively in SAP environments.”

In comprehensive user studies, ANYbotics found that many plant operators, maintenance managers and field service teams already use SAP in their daily business operations. Work orders, system history, performance trends and decisions – all of this data flows through SAP systems. “If customers use SAP, ANYbotics must be deployed natively in SAP environments,” explains Zingg.

Meanwhile, the SAP “Embodied AI” project team was looking for robotics companies that wanted to work with SAP. This project is about extending SAP Business AI to physical operations. To achieve this, robots are equipped with cognitive abilities so that they can carry out complex tasks independently while understanding the general business context.

It was clearly a perfect fit and has benefited both companies.

On the system side, a consistent digital thread ensures that the findings from ANYbotics' industrial inspections flow seamlessly into the SAP systems – and thus supports important business and operational decisions throughout the company.

The direct integration of ANYmal into well-known SAP workflows can help promote acceptance among end users, as the use of robotics can cause reservations among already busy industrial workforces. “Concerns have been raised around job security, workflow disruption and complexity, but integrating ANYmal into well-known SAP workflows can help alleviate such concerns,” explains Zingg.

Robots as part of the workforce

The first important integration point was SAP Field Service Management. Instead of just dispatching human technicians, customers can now assign work orders directly to ANYmal – just like any other member of the field team. The robot then independently carries out inspection tasks, collects data and reports the results directly back to the company's SAP system.

Originally, the integration was only used for certain systems. It is now being further expanded via the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). This means that the data generated by the robots can be flexibly made available wherever customers need it in their SAP landscape.

The goal is not to force people to adapt to the robots, but rather to have the robots adapt to human work processes. “ANYtime has to enter data into the SAP system, just like human team members,” emphasizes Zingg. ANYmal becomes another worker in the same operational recording system.

“Project Embodied AI” in practice

This combination of robot technology from ANYbotics and SAP builds the bridge between physical processes and business applications – and concretely expresses the goal of “Project Embodied AI”.

On the SAP side, AI agents work on ANYmal's robotic systems to perform physical tasks such as security checks.

On the ANYbotics site, ANYmal is a physical object that moves through space, sensing its surroundings and taking real-world constraints into account. ANYmal leverages historical and time series data from SAP to make informed decisions – and remains fully autonomous even in disconnected environments.

“It’s important to remember that ANYbotics has control over ANYmal’s behavior and inspection execution, while SAP has control over the business context such as work orders, asset data or operational priorities,” says Zingg. It is the SAP business context that determines how ANYmal's insights are used and implemented, while ANYbotics controls ANYmal's physical interactions.

Scale securely and responsibly

More than 200 ANYmal robots are already in use worldwide today, performing inspections in heavy industrial environments that would otherwise require a constant human presence.

Safety remains a key concern for ANYbotics. Extensive testing is performed on every deployment and there is always a service engineer on site to help ANYmal become familiar with its environment and train operators on safe operating procedures. ANYmal is designed for independent work, but people remain firmly on board.

A look into the future: industrial inspection via AI

As many industries struggle with skills shortages and the challenges of an aging workforce, undocumented expertise all too often goes missing. With autonomous inspection robots like ANYmal, this knowledge is captured and converted into programs that can be executed day after day at multiple locations. The data obtained flows into SAP and thus becomes corporate intelligence, which is retained permanently regardless of personnel changes.

The partnership between ANYbotics and SAP shows that this combination of robotics and business software enables a quick transition from the experimental phase to practical use.

In the future, industrial inspection will be AI-supported – not in the form of decoupled dashboards or isolated machines, but as an integrated, intelligent system in which physical robots and digital workflows seamlessly intertwine within the SAP landscape.

Robots like ANYmal will no longer be novelties in the future. They will be colleagues—albeit mechanical quadrupeds—extending human capabilities into areas that have always been inaccessible to humans. These robots, together with SAP, are shaping a future where industrial inspections in dirty, dusty, and hazardous environments provide accurate data that is converted into business-valuable insights.

Image courtesy of ANYbotics.