ANYbotics reveals full-scale robotic inspection solution

The Swiss robotics company ANYbotics has announced the launch of a new end-to-end robotic inspection system for the energy and industrial processing arenas. This solution aims to answer the call for better safety at production sites and lower downtime.

However, as technology has rarely kept pace with increasing safety and production demands, ANYbotics’ full autonomous, quadruped robot ANYmal uses inspection analytics software to automate routine condition monitoring of all infrastructure and equipment. So far, the company has introduced this product to a series of early customers in order to see how the inspection solution works for their facilities.

The need for effective inspection equipment stems from considerations of safety as well as efficiency. Solutions like ANYmal stand to assist industrial plants in ensuring healthy equipment and infrastructure to maximize uptime for production. While before now, manufacturers struggled to holistically assess the operational capacity of even IoT industrial products, robotics inspection technology has evolved in recent years to offer an automated and completely digital assessment solution.

Indeed, automating the inspection process promises to expedite the often-daily inspections required for industrial plant equipment. An added benefit of robotic inspection means highly accurate as well as rapid assessment.

All of that said, energy, construction and processing spaces have historically presented challenges for most wheeled robots. For this reason, the four-legged ANYmal provides a helpful alternative, as its limbs enable the machine to better navigate the tight spaces and steep stairs of many such sites.

The second obstacle of automated robotic equipment and site inspection involves the actual implementation process. In order for the inspection technology to properly assess equipment and efficiency for each unique site, that site must first wholly integrate the technology into its infrastructure, including streamlining ANYmal’s operations into routine site operations.

Today, ANYmal represents the first commercially certified robotic inspection product capable of independently conducting automated inspections as well as navigating about the site facility, including the ability to dock itself to a charging station without human assistance. Moreover, the four-legged robot comes equipped with acoustic, thermal and visual functionality so as to ensure optimal inspection even in areas with a lot of noise, dark spaces or adverse weather conditions.

At this point, ANYbotics has set out to normalize the integration of automated inspection technology onsite for equipment and infrastructure across the spheres of energy and industrial manufacturing. Currently, their next goal involves convincing enough plants of this product’s value and implementation feasability.

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