If there is a place where the fate of the global robot industry will be decided, Korea will undoubtedly be at the very top. Korea is an innovation country with the world's No. 1 robot density and a fierce battleground where robot corporations must prove their capabilities.
Swiss quadruped robot specialist ANYbotics has formally thrown its hat into the ring in the Korean market. Met on the 27th at the Embassy of Switzerland in Seoul's Jongno District, Su Yang, head of Asia-Pacific sales at ANYbotics, defined the Korean market as a strategic stronghold in the global robot competition and said this.
ANYbotics' flagship robot ANYmal goes anywhere, just like its name. A blast furnace zone at a steel mill—where heat tops 500 degrees, deafening noise roars, and invisible toxic gases occur—is one of ANYmal's main stages. In places even workers in protective suits struggle to approach, ANYmal moves autonomously and uses a thermal camera to find minute cracks in pipes.
By scratching where industry hurts, more than 200 units of ANYmal have been supplied across some of the harshest industrial sites worldwide. In the Korean market, the company is continuing concrete adoption talks with major industrial corporations in semiconductors, steel, petroleum and chemicals, and power and electric facilities.
Yang said, Korea is a global manufacturing powerhouse where large-scale manufacturing facilities are concentrated, and added, Ever-tightening safety regulations and a severe labor shortage projected for 2033 are becoming decisive catalysts pushing Korean corporations to accelerate the introduction of advanced inspection robots. The following is a Q&A with Yang.
—How did ANYbotics get its start
The roots of ANYbotics are at the Robotic Systems Lab of ETH Zurich, which has researched robot locomotion technology since 2009. When we spun out in 2016, our aim was clear from the start: a "combat-ready robot." We aspired to build robots that would perform perfectly even in unpredictable, extreme industrial sites, beyond controlled laboratories.
—How did you realize that goal
In 2019, for the first time among quadruped robots, we successfully applied simulation-based AI reinforcement learning to a real robot without error—the first in the industry. We rapidly trained massive locomotion data in a virtual space that would take years to collect in the real world, then transplanted it into the actual robot. It drew attention in academia as a case that solved a hard problem. Thanks to that, the robot learned on its own the subtle sense of balance that humans cannot code one by one, enabling stable walking even on slippery oil-covered floors and rough stony ground.
—Is demand in industrial sites actually high
The response is hot. Industrial customers focus strictly on return on investment (ROI), and ANYmal is regarded as advantageous in terms of labor cost savings, downtime prevention, and safety.
Global energy corporations such as Shell and BP lead the way, with BASF, the world's No. 1 chemical company, GE, a U.S. energy and industrial solutions company, and Siemens, a German engineering company, among core customers. In addition, leading corporations across various industries, such as Outokumpu, Europe's largest stainless steel manufacturer, and J-Power, a Japanese power company, have adopted and are using our solutions. On the strength of these results, we raised a $50 million (about 73.5 billion won) Series B last year, and about 200 employees are now devoted to advancing the technology.
—You called the Korean market a "battleground"
There are three big reasons. First, Korea has high "innovation receptivity." As statistics show—1,012 robots per 10,000 workers as of 2023, No. 1 in the world—Korea is the most proactive in adopting new technology. Second, production facilities are large in scale. Rather than many small factories scattered around, Korea is dominated by large-scale production bases where huge facilities are integrated in one place. Robots are essential to manage such vast facilities efficiently.
The third and last is a labor shortage. With demographic changes, a shortage of industrial workers by several hundred thousand by 2033 is anticipated, making the situation urgent. Because of these factors, Korea is the most ideal market to apply robot solutions. If we prove the value of robots in this battleground, they will work anywhere in the world.
—Which industries are you mainly targeting
Industries with harsh environments or many hazardous zones where human access is difficult are the top priority. Refining and chemicals, steel, and cement—where there are risks of high heat and toxic gases—are representative. In particular, in Korea we are focusing on the semiconductor industry. The subfab of a semiconductor plant has complex, intertwined piping and equipment and constant gas leak risks, so robot demand is very high. Utilities such as power plants and substations are also main targets.
—The quadruped robot market has competitors like Boston Dynamics. What is ANYmal's unique strength
If competitors are "general-purpose platforms" that span various fields, we are an "end-to-end solution" strictly specialized for "industrial inspection" (integrated support from hardware to data analysis). Without add-ons, it has a thermal camera, gas detector, and microphone all built in, and with the highest waterproof and dustproof rating (IP67), it can withstand severe weather. Customers are not buying a robot machine; they are buying the "data" and "safety" the robot collects.
—How do you compare with Chinese corporations that wage low-price offensives
Chinese corporations mainly focus on hardware prices, but what industrial sites want is an integrated solution. We have the software capability to analyze robot-collected data to determine equipment anomalies and instantly link that to a client's existing management system. The direction is different in terms of data security and system integration capabilities.
—Korean corporations that adopt foreign robots worry about maintenance when breakdowns occur
We know that well. Downtime is fatal to corporations. Competitors take a long time because products must be sent to headquarters for repairs, but through Korean partners, local engineers are dispatched immediately. Domestic engineers can resolve more than 80% of issues on-site right away through parts replacement and other measures.
—Have there been cases where ANYmal actually prevented safety accidents on-site
There was a case where we deployed a robot equipped with an acoustic imaging sensor at a cement production facility and pinpointed compressed air and gas leak points. In a narrow production zone, it found six leaks in less than two weeks. If we scale such rapid detection capability across an entire plant for one year of operation, it can reduce waste from continuous compressed air leaks and save hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual energy expense.
—Are the robot's features also being upgraded
Next year, we will launch a new model, ANYmal X, with explosion-proof certification. It can be operated safely even in zones with explosion risks and will be a game changer in the refining and chemical plant market. As we focus on creating tangible operational value through robots, our goal next year is to build concrete adoption cases in collaboration with major Korean corporations to prove that value.