ANYbotics launches Shift to streamline robot fleet operations and scale inspections

According to ANYbotics AG, undetected failures cost the world’s 500 largest companies approximately $1.4 trillion in downtime each year, with a single hour of outage averaging $250,000. The company today launched ANYbotics Shift, a platform intended to simplify asset health assessments and enable preventative maintenance.

“The new platform enables companies to unlock the full potential of autonomous inspection by planning and executing multi-robot missions, while organizing field data captured directly around existing asset management infrastructure,” ANYbotics explained.

“Robotic inspection offers the greatest value when field data flows directly into maintenance action,” said Péter Fankhauser, co-founder and CEO of ANYbotics. “Shift makes this seamless. It unifies plant mapping, robot fleet coordination, AI analysis for inspections, and system integrations into a single platform. At its core, Shift AI powers the intelligence that turns field findings into work orders, saving millions and avoiding unplanned downtime.”

Founded in 2016, ANYbotics said its ANYmal quadrupedal robots are well-suited for tasks such as routine inspections and real-time data collection, addressing labor shortages and improving worker safety. The Zurich-based company serves the global power, energy, metals, mining and chemicals industries.

Shift includes four modules

ANYbotics said its cloud-based platform delivers visibility, action and measurable impact through four interconnected modules:

• • Fleet on duty unifies the planning, monitoring and control of an entire fleet of inspection robots. A distributed control system (DCS) can directly activate missions. The system ensures that critical assets are inspected repeatedly and consistently, allowing reliability engineers to review findings and prioritize repairs.
  • Intuition of change combines thermal, audible, visual and gas readings with operating conditions such as engine speed, load and ambient temperature. A reading counts as an anomaly only when the context says so, reporting overheating, partial discharges, leaks and misalignments while they are still relatively harmless, ANYbotics said.
  • ShiftConnect transforms confirmed anomalies directly into work orders within the operating software. Through product connectors and standard REST APIs, Connect integrates into five categories:
    1. Distributed Control Systems (DCS) like Yokogawa
    2. Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS)
    3. ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) tools such as SAP and IBM Maximo
    4. Asset performance management (APM) platforms such as GE Vernova APM
    5. Digital twin or contextualization layers like Cognite and Oracle

    This two-way integration allows process thresholds to automatically trigger new robot inspection cycles, while a built-in notification center provides real-time alerts via tools like email and Microsoft Teams. ANYbotics plans to add SMS and WhatsApp support.

  • Shift maps provides a live digital twin of a manufacturing facility. Map inspection objectives into APM and enterprise asset management (EAM) infrastructures. Structures are imported by asset ID, so each reading is tied to the right piece of equipment.

ANYbotics said the transition from the Data Navigator wealth management product to Shift will be automatic with an upcoming update. Shift AI learns from each connected module, operating from the same plant model.

ANYbotics answers questions about Shift

Jacob Euler-Rolle, head of product management and workflow integration at ANYbotics, answered the following questions from The robot report:

How much integration work with enterprise systems is required for a first-time customer?

Euler-Rolle: Very little. Shift is designed to work with the systems already used in your plant, so a first-time implementation requires no business integration, manages the fleet and delivers results independently right out of the box.

When users are ready to connect their ANYmal or ANYmal to their software stack, we offer pre-built integrations through our partnerships with SAP, GE Vernova, Siemens Energy, Cognite, SLB, and Yokogawa.

For any other system, the Shift REST API (documented with OpenAPI) connects data and results to the CMMS or APM and allows existing platforms to trigger inspections. If necessary, our team can also create custom connectors during onboarding.

Therefore, for users, effort is minimal and largely limited to granting network access, securing approvals, and mapping asset IDs to align with the plant’s existing asset hierarchy.

How much training do customers need?

Euler-Rolle: Training takes just a few days rather than weeks, and users don’t need prior robotics skills. The entire onboarding process is organized by job role through our ANYbotics Academy, which has already trained over 1,000 users.

Because Shift uses role-based access, each user sees an interface tailored to their specific responsibilities. So whether it’s operators scheduling and monitoring the fleet, reliability engineers reviewing inspection results, or maintenance teams receiving work orders directly within their existing systems, the user interface is tailored to their role. Role-based access makes the interface adapt to each person, so no one gets lost in features they don’t need or sees data they shouldn’t.

What other robots could Shift work with?

Euler-Rolle: Today, Shift supports incoming or landing inspection data from third-party robots and sensors. Comprehensive fleet management for non-ANYmal hardware will begin rolling out next year, as Shift advances toward being a single operations hub for mixed robot fleets.

Will Shift enable interoperability between robots from different vendors and will it comply with VDA 5050 or US standards?

Euler-Rolle: Interoperability is at the heart of our Shift roadmap. While standards like VDA 5050 were designed for AGVs and AMRs navigating fixed nodes in intralogistics, inspection robots in process plants operate differently. Their primary goal is to acquire asset inspection data rather than execute transportation orders.

The Shift API offers a layer of interoperability that focuses directly on inspection tasks and asset management, while integrating established fleet standards wherever they are relevant. Since there is currently no unified standard for inspection robots in either the United States or Europe, we plan to help create one.

What provisions have you adopted for IT security?

Euler-Rolle: Data security is critical for physical AI. Industrial users need a verified and secure end-to-end data flow before implementing autonomous systems. ANYbotics enforces strict digital boundaries to maintain the integrity of ANYmal’s decision making, prevent external manipulation, and ensure secure deployment in sensitive industrial environments.

Shift operates according to ISO 27001 standards and provides end-to-end encryption for data in transit and at rest, rigorous tenant isolation, and fine-grained role-based access control to protect information and ensure secure operations.

Hosted on ANYbotics Cloud, Shift supports regional data residency to keep information within specific geographies and offers an on-premise deployment option for organizations with stringent local regulatory requirements.

Is Shift immediately available in North America and Europe? And Asia?

Euler-Rolle: Shift will be available globally with version 1.0, including North America, Europe, Asia and all regions where we currently operate.

Users are already reporting the benefits

Move it is already used in more than 200 robot deployments and performs hundreds of thousands of inspections every month, ANYbotics noted.

“Shift makes it easier for SAP to integrate robotic inspections into business processes,” said Adelya Fatykhova, global lead architect for embodied AI agents, physical AI and robotics at SAP. “Physical AI on the SAP Business AI Platform translates a business need into a Shift mission, with the results stored in SAP for follow-ups such as creating maintenance orders. Robotic inspection missions via Shift enhance SAP’s autonomous supply chain for resources and field service with robotic execution.”

In the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), the platform saved more than $3.5 million in its first months of operation on critical substation assets. It reported overheating of conductors, partial discharges and gas leaks that manual shifts had missed, ANYbotics said.

“ANYbotics The Shift API provides our APM platform with consistent and valuable equipment-level inspection data from across the plant,” said Neha Joshi, product leader at GE Vernova APM.

“Combining field information with our analytics creates a more complete picture of asset status, helping teams identify, validate and address issues more effectively,” he added. “When our models flag a potential problem, we can use the same API to send robots to check it out and gain additional context.”

At a 24/7 Vigier Cement plant, Shift performed more than 33,000 autonomous inspections in 16 months, ANYbotics said. The platform structured each reading based on the plant’s asset hierarchy so the maintenance team could compare condition trends over time and prioritize repairs.