ANYbotics: Readying an explosion-proof robot for the oil and gas industry

Inspections are essential to running industrial facilities reliably. But they can also be dangerous, especially in sectors such as oil and gas. ANYmal X is built exactly for these potentially explosive environments. Thanks to its four legs, the explosion-proof inspection robot takes over asset inspections wherever conditions become dangerous for people. Uneven floors, stairs, and confined spaces pose no problem to it.

ANYmal X is made by the Swiss company ANYbotics. A spin-off of ETH Zurich, the company has been on the market for around ten years and employs around 200 people. Although well established, it has kept its start-up DNA, favouring rapid iterations and fast prototyping over cumbersome, lengthy development processes.

A pioneer in autonomous systems, the company set out to bring the world’s first four-legged, explosion-proof inspection robot to market. A robot that can operate in environments with flammable gases and dust, known as explosion-hazardous zones (ex-zones), offers its manufacturer several advantages, including explosion protection that’s a USP against growing competition from China and meets a significant need in the oil and gas industry, an attractive customer segment for ANYbotics.

We quickly assembled an interdisciplinary team, and within two days of onboarding the experts were already working productively in ANYbotics’ environment. They brought valuable knowledge from other projects, as Jeannette Liniger, Principal Account Manager at Zühlke, explained, ‘we know our way around standards and processes in highly regulated industries, and we were able to put that know-how to good use at ANYbotics’.

While ANYbotics drove forward the development of safety-critical assemblies, our hardware experts provided hands-on support at critical points. This is where the team’s interdisciplinary make-up paid off. Team members could work very flexibly, whether on developing the production-ready prototype, testing or tackling smaller issues. Where a problem persisted despite intensive troubleshooting, targeted deep dives cleared the blockage and shortened the development loop.

Our experience in fast prototyping also proved highly valuable. The team was able to synchronise PCB design, production, and testing so closely that some prototypes could be tested after just one week. We also contributed valuable know-how to setting up the strictly regulated production and quality management (QM) system.

After seven months of intensive collaboration, the system components were ready for ANYbotics to begin the certification process.

For companies in the oil and gas industry, there are further benefits as ANYmal X makes inspections possible where they were previously too expensive or too dangerous. And because the robot inspects the same way every time, data quality is higher than with manual inspections. In this way, the system helps industrial facilities operate more safely. Plus, by detecting problems early, it also reduces downtime.

Jeannette Liniger is proud of the result, emphasising, that ‘with ANYmal X, ANYbotics is becoming a pioneer in four-legged autonomous systems for potentially explosive environments. This opens up new opportunities for the company and makes operating facilities in the oil and gas industry safer and more efficient’.