ANYbotics, a Swiss robotics company, is betting that the future of industrial inspections (including carbon capture) belongs to autonomous four-legged robots rather than human crews in hard hats.
Its robotic dog, ANYmal, is now patrolling Equinor’s Northern Lights carbon transport and storage facility in Norway, a largely unmanned site designed to collect and permanently store captured CO2 beneath the North Sea.
The robot, nicknamed Roberta by Equinor, conducts regular inspections, monitors gas concentrations and searches for micro leakages that could otherwise go unnoticed.
“We turned the paradigm around and said, ‘Hey, instead of sending humans still around for days and days and days, let’s use a robot that is mobile and has all the high-end sensors on top,’” said Dr. Péter Fankhauser, the company’s chief executive.
The deployment reflects a broader push across energy and heavy industry to automate dangerous inspection work while improving efficiency and cutting emissions. Northern Lights operators use the robot to patrol the facility, create gas concentration maps and investigate anomalies remotely from a control center roughly 30 minutes away.
“What they’re cautious about is what’s happening that we’re not aware of,” Dr. Fankhauser said. “Having a regular patrol to look and see and listen, that’s the basis of it.”
ANYmal combines thermal imaging, gas sensors and an acoustic imaging system equipped with 64 microphones that can detect ultrasonic signatures from tiny leaks. The system can identify escaping gases, compressed air leaks and overheating equipment before failures escalate.
The company says its robots now perform roughly 120,000 autonomous inspection points a month across industrial sites globally. The data is analyzed using AI models that flag anomalies and help operators decide whether maintenance crews are needed.
“The robot is important, four legs is important, but it’s the full stack that you need to take into account,” Dr. Fankhauser said.
ANYbotics is also preparing to launch an explosion-proof version called ANYmal X later this year, aimed at hazardous oil, gas and chemical facilities where methane or other combustible gases are present. Dr. Fankhauser said it would be “the world’s first and only robot” designed for such environments.
The company sees applications far beyond carbon capture. Its robots are already used in steel plants, power utilities, chemical facilities and offshore energy operations. In some cases, customers reduced worker exposure to hazardous environments by as much as 70% to 90%, according to the company.
The economic argument is increasingly tied to emissions reduction as well. Dr. Fankhauser said robots can identify compressed-air leaks that waste significant amounts of energy. In one cement industry deployment, he said, fixing leakages helped reduce emissions by roughly 1,200 tons of CO2 annually.
“The best safety is when you remove people from the exposure to hazardous environments,” he said.
Read more: Northern Lights Issues First Certificates Confirming Offshore CO2 Storage
