Robot Dogs Start Real Inspection Rounds. Could One Walk Your Engine Room?

Every engineer knows the round. Walk the engine room, look at the gauges, feel for heat, listen for a noise that was not there yesterday, smell for oil. Now a four-legged robot is being sold to do part of that job.

What happened. The Swiss company ANYbotics has started delivering ANYmal X, a four-legged inspection robot built to work in places where gas may be present, and Equinor is among the first customers. The robot is certified for those areas (ATEX and IECEx, the European and international rules for equipment that could ignite gas). It carries thermal cameras, visual and sound sensors and gas detection. It checks pumps, compressors, valves and pipes for overheating, leaks and strange noises. It climbs stairs and walks narrow walkways without changes to the plant. ANYbotics says it ran hundreds of test missions since 2023 with BP, Shell, Petrobras and others, including offshore trials on the Valhall field in the North Sea. Its software schedules the rounds and sends the findings into the maintenance system.

One that already works. At Posco's steel mill in South Korea, a Boston Dynamics robot dog has checked 30 oxygen ports and hundreds of pipes every hour since October 2024. Before, at least two workers took turns doing it around the clock. Posco runs three of them. Each costs about $200,000. The limits are honest: it works 40 minutes, then rests 20. It cannot close a valve. And a person in a control room still reads everything it finds.

What is missing. No price for ANYmal X. No result from Equinor. And no ship uses one yet.

Why a superintendent should care. An engine room is exactly the kind of place these robots are built for: noisy, hot, full of stairs and pipes, and often with fewer people than before. A robot could do a night round in an unmanned engine room and record the same readings every time. But a ship moves, and these robots were tested on plants that stand still.

What to ask. If anyone offers one for a ship: has it been tested on a rolling deck? How long does the battery last? Who reads the data, and when? And what happens when it finds something it cannot fix? [Splash247 · Korea JoongAng Daily]

This story is part of the Maritime AI Digest of 1 November 2026.