Péter Fankhauser on Building a Fleet of Autonomous Robots at ANYbotics

“Nobody wants a robot.” That’s how Péter Fankhauser, CEO of ANYbotics, reframes industrial automation. Customers are not buying quadrupeds for spectacle. They are investing in solutions that solve real operational problems. In this episode of Automated, Brian Heater speaks with the ETH Zurich spinout founder about turning cutting-edge robotics research into a commercially deployed inspection platform used in offshore wind, oil and gas, and other hazardous environments.

They discuss why ANYbotics is not chasing humanoid hype, how the company built traction through real-world deployments, what industrial facilities actually look like behind the scenes, and how reinforcement learning reshaped their control systems. The conversation also covers transparency in robotics marketing, the role of teleoperation in autonomy, the shift from collecting data to delivering insights, and the ethical line the company drew around weaponization. It is a grounded look at where industrial AI is delivering value today and what it takes to scale autonomous robots in the real world.

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