ANYbotics ANYmal X Review: The Only Ex-Certified Quadruped, and the FCC Rule That Now Sits On Top of It

ANYbotics builds the only four-legged inspection robot with an explosion-protection certificate. That is a real engineering achievement and the reason ANYmal X exists. It also gives the machine a narrow, well-defined buyer: someone with a classified hazardous area, a fixed inspection route, and a budget that survives contact with hazardous-area infrastructure costs.

The thing this review is really about happened on 28 July 2026, and it is nowhere on the ANYmal X product page. The FCC updated its Covered List to include foreign-produced advanced robotic devices, following a determination by a White House-convened Executive Branch interagency body. IEEE Spectrum reports the scope as mobile, communicating robots weighing more than 2 kilograms that incorporate onboard sensing and communications and have some degree of autonomy, with carve-outs for systems under 2 kg and systems communicating at less than 200 kilobits per second. An autonomous, communicating inspection quadruped built in Switzerland sits well inside that definition. The effect is forward-looking: new foreign-produced models cannot receive new FCC equipment authorizations, which is what gates import, marketing and sale in the US. ANYbotics VP of strategy Philipp Frey told IEEE Spectrum that the company plans to apply for conditional approval of future products.

About nineteen months before that, on 12 December 2024, ANYbotics raised an additional $60M in a round it publicly described as driving US expansion. The FCC action lands on that thesis directly. Meanwhile ANYmal X was unveiled in March 2022, commercial orders opened in September 2022, and as of August 2026 the vendor page still reads "2026 ANYmal X specifications coming soon."

Companion reading: How to choose a robot dog or quadruped, Inspection robots ultimate guide, Legged and quadruped robot hardware, Robot cybersecurity ultimate guide, Boston Dynamics Spot review.

Table of contents

1. Key takeaways
2. The FCC Covered List, and what it does to a Swiss robot
3. The certification, read carefully
4. Announced in 2022, specifications still pending
5. Security posture: no CVEs, one certification, no product audit
6. What it costs, and what the circulating numbers are worth
7. Performance, and how it compares
8. Who should buy it
9. Verdict
10. Frequently asked questions

The FCC Covered List, and what it does to a Swiss robot

The FCC's 28 July 2026 action (Fact Sheet DOC-423682A1) added two categories to the Covered List: advanced robotic devices, defined in the fact sheet as "mobile robots, such as humanoids and quadrupeds", and connected power inverters. The fact sheet states that the Executive Branch interagency body found these foreign-made products, "regardless of the nationality of origin", pose "unacceptable risks to the national security of the United States or the safety and security of United States persons."

The mechanism is equipment authorization. The fact sheet is explicit about the boundaries: the restrictions "apply to new device models"; the action "does not prohibit the import, sale, or use of any existing models of advanced robotic device and power inverters the FCC previously authorized"; it "does not affect any previously purchased devices"; and it "does not affect sales to, or use by, the federal government or federal agencies." IEEE Spectrum adds that drones, connected vehicles and medical devices are exempt from this particular restriction.

Conditional approval is the escape route, and the burden is heavy. The fact sheet routes applications to the Department of War (or, for inverters, DHS) via [email protected]. IEEE Spectrum's reporting describes a national-security review by the defence department or the Department of Homeland Security, disclosure of beneficial ownership and supply-chain risks, and "a detailed, time-bound plan to establish or expand manufacturing in the United States for the advanced robotic device", with applications due by 1 January 2028. Whether ANYbotics has filed, and with what status, is not public as of August 2026.

The competitive effect is one-sided. Boston Dynamics, Ghost Robotics and Persona are US manufacturers. Brendan Schulman, Boston Dynamics' vice president of policy, wrote an endorsement of the rule on LinkedIn, quoted by IEEE Spectrum: "I sense that this is just the first round in a series of policies that will define the success and growth of the industry for decades to come." For a US buyer comparing ANYmal X against a US quadruped in 2026, one of the differences is now regulatory. Ask any vendor in this class, ANYbotics included, for their authorization status in writing before signing.

The certification, read carefully

The vendor page states "ATEX & IECEx certified up to Zone 1 IIB" and "Certified for up to Zone 1 where inflammable gases are likely to occur." Each part of that string is a limit.

Zone 1 means ATEX Category 2G: explosive atmosphere likely in normal operation. Zone 0, continuous presence, tank interiors, is excluded. Gas group IIB excludes IIC, which is hydrogen and acetylene. Practically, hydrogen production and electrolyser plants, hydrogen compressor houses, ammonia-to-hydrogen units, and hydrotreater or hydrocracker areas classified IIC are outside the certificate. For a robot sold into refining, chemicals and decarbonisation, that carve-out deserves to be on the first page of any evaluation, and it is not.

The certification as published is gas only. No dust certification (Zone 21 or 22) is stated. The page's "dust- and waterproof" language refers to IP67 ingress protection, which is a different thing from an Ex dust certificate, and the distinction matters for the mining and metals verticals ANYbotics sells into.

What is not published: the full Ex marking string, the temperature class (T1 to T6), the certifying body, and the certificate number. The page describes the robot as "intrinsically safe", which points at an Ex i protection concept, but no marking confirms it. Temperature class constrains buyer suitability as much as gas group does. Request the IECEx certificate number and verify it on the IECEx online certificate system before you accept any suitability claim, including this one. The page also states IP67, CE compliance and FCC compliance; the last of those now sits in tension with the section above.

Announced in 2022, specifications still pending

ANYmal X was unveiled together with PETRONAS at the Offshore Technology Conference OTC Asia in Malaysia on 22 March 2022, billed as "the world's first Ex-proof legged robot." The same release said "Customers intend to deploy 300+ units during the next few years", and described an Early Adopters Program giving "priority access to 2023 ANYmal X production deliveries." Named participants in that program were PETRONAS, Equinor, Petrobras, Woodside and Shell.

On 28 September 2022 ANYbotics opened commercial orders for ANYmal X at the SPRINT Robotics World Conference, stating "With over 500 ANYmal X units already reserved, ANYbotics is scaling production output with its global manufacturing partners."

Field work did follow. On 4 August 2023 ANYbotics published a case study on ANYmal X testing at BASF's Ludwigshafen site, in Zone 1 areas at the Steamcracker and Oxo Plant, running 20-minute missions of 20 inspection points across multiple floors.

Then the timeline stretches. In the 22 September 2025 investor announcement, ANYbotics still referred to "the forthcoming ANYmal X." In August 2026 the product page reads "2026 ANYmal X specifications coming soon."

So: four years and five months after announcement, three years after the promised 2023 production deliveries, and roughly four years after 500+ reservations were claimed, the vendor publishes no specification sheet for this product. The 300+ and 500+ figures were intent and reservation statements, never confirmed deliveries, and no public source gives a delivered ANYmal X count. The only unit milestone ANYbotics has published is the 100th ANYmal robot, produced in December 2023 and delivered to DSM-Firmenich; that is the base ANYmal line, not the X. Treat any aggregator that converts a reservation figure into a fleet count as wrong.

One caveat on reading the customer list as validation: Climate Investment, which joined the investor group in September 2025, counts Aramco, BP, Equinor, Eni and Petrobras among its limited partners, and ANYbotics' own announcement notes that many of them "are already deploying ANYbotics technology in their operations." Customer and investor overlap makes those deployment announcements less arm's-length than they look.

Security posture: no CVEs, one certification, no product audit

No CVE has been published against ANYbotics or ANYmal. A keyword query against the NVD API for both "anybotics" and "anymal" returns zero results as of August 2026. That is a clean record on the public register.

It is also a thin one, and the academic literature says so. Cybersecurity of Teleoperated Quadruped Robots: A Systematic Survey of Vulnerabilities, Threats, and Open Defense Gaps (Mohammad Sabouri, University of Genoa, arXiv 2602.23404, February 2026, a preprint rather than a peer-reviewed paper) states that the platform's "security posture remains opaque: no independent security audit has been published, no CVE has been disclosed, and implementation details regarding encryption, authentication, and key management are not publicly documented." It notes that while the platform holds ATEX/IECEx certifications, "these standards address physical safety rather than cybersecurity, and compliance with them cannot be interpreted as evidence of resilience against deliberate cyber attacks." It adds that "the absence of public security documentation is itself a concern for organizations conducting threat assessments, as it precludes independent verification of the protections claimed by the manufacturer." The survey's own platform table scores ANYmal at 7.2 out of 10 on equal weighting, with assessment confidence rated "Low" on the basis of available public documentation, and carries the caveat that "absence of disclosed CVEs does not imply absence of vulnerabilities."

One thing the survey does not capture, because of timing, is that on 6 February 2026 ANYbotics announced ISO/IEC 27001 certification, stating it "successfully passed the rigorous, multi-stage audit with zero non-conformities on its first attempt." That is a genuine independent third-party audit, and it partly answers the survey. It certifies an information security management system, so it speaks to process rather than to the robot's firmware, radio stack or ROS 2 configuration. No product-level security assessment has been published.

ANYbotics also runs a responsible disclosure programme (policy version 2.0, dated 16 December 2025) with a three business day response commitment and an explicit safe harbour: "If you act in good faith and follow the guidelines in this policy, we will not take any legal action against you regarding your report." Scope covers ANYbotics online offerings and robots "owned and operated by ANYbotics", and the rules of engagement explicitly prohibit testing on customer-owned assets. The stated floor on rewards is a CHF 50 gift certificate, which will not attract serious researchers. There is no public security advisory page.

One correction to carry, because search summaries conflate the two robots. CVE-2025-41110 belongs to Ghost Robotics Vision 60, version 0.27.2, not to ANYmal. Per NVD, "Encrypted WiFi and SSH credentials were found in the Ghost Robotics Vision 60 v0.27.2 APK", allowing an attacker to join the robot's WiFi and read its data (it runs ROS 2 without default authentication) and to connect over SSH and gain full control. It was coordinated by INCIBE, published 22 October 2025, and carries an NVD CVSS 3.1 base score of 8.8. Both robots appear in the same survey paper, which is the likely source of the mix-up. No CVE in that series applies to ANYbotics.

Unverified for ANYmal: encryption, authentication and key management implementation, and whether it ships ROS 2 with SROS2 and DDS security enabled. Ask.

What it costs, and what the circulating numbers are worth

ANYbotics publishes no list price. The robot is sold as a configured deployment, and no primary-source purchase or lease figure could be verified for this review. The purchase and monthly lease numbers circulating on comparison and aggregator sites trace to no vendor, filing or named-journalist source, so this review quotes none of them. If a number matters to your business case, get it from ANYbotics in writing.

The more useful framing is the ratio of hardware to everything else. Documented cost lines beyond the robot include the docking station, charger, ruggedized control tablet and transport box that the vendor lists as part of the offering, additional docking stations sited along routes to extend reach, the Data Navigator software platform, cloud and enterprise integration, route and mission design, site validation, training and onboarding. In a Zone 1 area, an Ex-rated docking station is a hazardous-area electrical installation project with its own certification and installation cost. No public source quantifies it, and nobody should assume it is a rounding error against the robot.

The highest-value unanswered commercial question: whether Data Navigator is a mandatory recurring subscription, what it costs, whether it is tiered, and whether inspection-point or route count gates the tier. Put that in the RFP.

Performance, and how it compares

ANYmal X specifications are unpublished. The figures below are the base ANYmal, taken from the vendor's own product page, and they do not transfer to the X. Ex enclosures usually add mass and thermal constraints, and no published data or independent measurement covers the X.

The two payload specifications the vendor does publish for both robots differ, which is the clearest available evidence that the X carries a different sensor suite from the base machine:

Payload spec	ANYmal (base)	ANYmal X
Thermal camera range	-40 to 550 degrees C	-10 to +400 degrees C
Microphone	Ultrasonic, 0 to 384 kHz	Audible frequency range
Spotlight	Up to 3790 lm	Stated, no figure published
Optical zoom	20x	20x
Pan-tilt	+/- 90 vertical, +/- 165 horizontal	+/- 90 vertical, +/- 165 horizontal
Gas sensing	Optional, up to two sensors	Integrated, optional gas sensor payload

Against the field:

	ANYmal (base figures)	Boston Dynamics Spot	Ghost Robotics Vision 60	Unitree Go2
ATEX/IECEx	Zone 1 IIB (X model)	None published	None published	None
Ingress	IP67	See our Spot review	Not compared here	Not compared here
Runtime	90 to 120 min (vendor spec)	See our Spot review	Not compared here	Not compared here
Payload	Up to 10 kg additional	Not compared here	Not compared here	Not compared here
Public CVE	None	None found	CVE-2025-41110 (Oct 2025)	Fleet-level exploit publicly reported
US Covered List (Jul 2026)	Foreign-produced, in scope	US-made, out of scope	US-made, out of scope	Foreign-produced, in scope

Other vendor-stated base ANYmal numbers: 0.75 m/s normal walking speed, 2 km walking range per charge (the same 90 to 120 minutes), 2x Intel i7 8th-gen 6-core edge compute, built-in WiFi and 4G/LTE, 3 hours to full charge and 100 minutes to 70 percent, 360 degree LiDAR plus six depth cameras plus two optical tele-operation cameras, and up to 10 kg of additional payload. On a full charge the duty cycle is therefore roughly one part work to one and a half or two parts charging, better if routes are designed around the 100 minute quick charge, which is why docking station siting drives route design.

Two cautions. Third-party comparisons citing a two to four hour ANYmal runtime contradict the vendor's own page; distrust the higher figure. And battery swapping inside a Zone 1 area is normally prohibited by hazardous-area practice, so any swap-based availability plan for the X needs a direct answer from ANYbotics. Whether the X even has a swappable pack is unpublished.

The only quantified customer outcome on the vendor's ANYmal page is a testimonial from André Kubitzky, Automation and Robotics, stating that "regular thermal readings helped to reduce maintenance interventions and increased production uptime by 1.5% directly attributable to ANYmal." It is undated, unaudited and vendor-published; the adjacent case study is titled "ANYmal Increases Facility Uptime" and concerns W.R. Grace. Gauge-reading accuracy, thermography accuracy, autonomy success rate, mean distance between interventions and MTBF are all unpublished.

The claim, seen on aggregator sites, that Spot operates in Zone 1 or 2 via an explosion-proof accessory package could not be corroborated in any certification record. No certified Zone 1 Spot is verifiable.

Who should buy it

Buy it if you operate a Zone 1 IIB gas classified area outside the US, on fixed routes, with an existing hazardous-area engineering function that can specify and certify docking infrastructure, and you value one certified supplier over a broad developer ecosystem. Refining, offshore, chemicals and utilities with a European or Asian site footprint are the fit.

Do not buy it if your hazard is hydrogen or acetylene (IIC), your risk is combustible dust, you need Zone 0, you are buying for US sites and need a newly authorized model in the near term, you want an open platform for your own applications, or you need a specification sheet before signing. That last one is real in August 2026.

Verdict

ANYmal X is the only legged robot with a published Ex certificate for classified hazardous areas, and that position is genuine. Buy it for the certificate, and read the certificate carefully, because "up to Zone 1 IIB", gas only, is a narrower envelope than the marketing implies.

Everything else argues for patience. Specifications are unpublished more than four years after announcement and three years after the promised 2023 production deliveries. No independent measurement of any performance figure exists. Product security is undocumented, though the February 2026 ISO 27001 certification is a real audit of the company's information security management. Pricing is opaque and the figures circulating online have no traceable source. Several marquee customers share limited partners with an investor. And since 28 July 2026 the US market, the one ANYbotics raised $60M in December 2024 to expand into, requires a conditional approval the company says it plans to seek.

Corporately the company looks stable: founder-CEO Péter Fankhauser still in post, CFO Fredrik Isler, Thierry Obédé appointed Chief Revenue Officer on 22 March 2026, and total funding stated as over $130 million as of the December 2024 round, plus an undisclosed Climate Investment participation in September 2025. Round-label and total-funding figures on aggregator sites conflict with the company's own releases; use the releases. ANYbotics is private and Swiss, so revenue is unverified.

Rating for the intended buyer: strong on certification, unproven on delivery. Run a paid pilot with contractual availability targets before committing a fleet.

Frequently asked questions

Does the FCC action ban ANYmal from the United States? It bars new FCC equipment authorizations for covered foreign-produced robots, which gates import, marketing and sale of new models. The FCC fact sheet states that previously authorized models can still be imported, sold and used, that previously purchased devices are unaffected, and that federal government purchase and use is unaffected. ANYbotics told IEEE Spectrum it plans to apply for conditional approval; Spectrum reports applications are due by 1 January 2028.

Is ANYmal X certified for hydrogen environments? No. The stated certification is up to Zone 1 IIB. Gas group IIC, which covers hydrogen and acetylene, is excluded.

Does ANYmal have any published security vulnerabilities? No CVE has been published against ANYbotics or ANYmal; the NVD keyword index returns nothing for either term. CVE-2025-41110, frequently misattributed to ANYmal, belongs to Ghost Robotics Vision 60 v0.27.2.

Has ANYbotics been security audited? It announced ISO/IEC 27001 certification on 6 February 2026, passed with zero non-conformities on the first attempt. That certifies an information security management system. No product-level security assessment or penetration test has been published.

How much does ANYmal X cost? No list price is published, and no primary source for a purchase or lease figure could be verified. The numbers circulating on aggregator sites have no traceable origin and are not quoted here.

How long does it run on a charge? The base ANYmal runs 90 to 120 minutes per charge, with a 3 hour full charge and 100 minutes to 70 percent, per the vendor page. ANYmal X figures are unpublished. Comparison sites quoting two to four hours contradict the manufacturer.

How many ANYmal X units are deployed? No public source gives a number. ANYbotics claimed "over 500 ANYmal X units already reserved" in September 2022, which is a reservation figure. The only production milestone the company has published is its 100th ANYmal robot, in December 2023, on the base line.

Is ANYbotics in financial trouble? No evidence of distress found. Total funding was stated as over $130 million at the December 2024 round, and Climate Investment joined the investor group in September 2025 for an undisclosed amount. No insolvency, lawsuit, investigation or ownership change found as of August 2026.

What should I ask ANYbotics before buying? The IECEx certificate number and full Ex marking including temperature class and protection concept, US authorization status under the Covered List, whether Data Navigator is a mandatory subscription and how it is tiered, the ANYmal X thermal and acoustic payload specifications in writing, whether batteries can be swapped in-zone, the installed cost of Ex-rated docking, and the ANYmal X units currently in production service with references.