ANYbotics Launches Shift Operational Engine to Power Autonomous Robot Inspection at Scale

AI-driven robotic inspection technology company ANYbotics announced the launch of ANYbotics Shift, the new operational engine powering the company's autonomous inspection technologies.

The company said that Shift is designed to simplify asset health assessments and enable downtime-minimizing preventive maintenance. Shift connects a facility’s plant model, robot fleet, inspection intelligence data and maintenance systems into one continuous workflow.

ANYbotics said that the new platform empowers businesses to harness the full potential of autonomous inspection by planning and running multi-robot missions, while organizing captured field data directly around existing asset management infrastructure.

Autonomous robot inspection data generation and analysis

The company said that undetected failures cost the world's 500 largest companies an estimated $1.4 trillion each year in preventable downtime, with a single hour of outage averaging $250,000. ANYbotics said that it addresses this challenge by deploying autonomous robots that collect hundreds of thousands of inspection data points every month.

The company said that this continuous data stream creates something unprecedented in process industry operations: a comparable inspection baseline across every asset over time. By tracking this baseline, ANYbotics added that reliability engineers can clearly see an asset’s degradation curve and intervene before a minor anomaly escalates into a multi-million-dollar shutdown.

“Robotic inspection delivers the most value when field data flows directly into maintenance action," said Péter Fankhauser, co-founder and CEO of ANYbotics. "Shift makes that seamless. It unifies plant mapping, robot fleet coordination, inspection AI analytics, and systems integrations into one platform. At its core, Shift AI powers the intelligence that transforms field findings into work orders, saving millions in avoiding unplanned downtime.”

As industrial sites scale from single robots to full fleets, ANYbotics said that the challenge shifts from what individual machines can inspect to how whole fleets operate, focusing on rapid site deployment, team-wide adoption and seamless integration into maintenance workflows. ANYbotics said that Shift was built specifically for this transition and optimizes the four pillars of fleet success:

• Deployment speed
• Role-based adoption
• Asset intelligence
• Workflow integration

The company said that setup tasks, which once took specialists weeks, can now be completed by local technicians in days, while raw sensor data is automatically transformed into prioritized work orders.

“ANYbotics Shift's API gives our APM platform consistent, valuable equipment-level inspection data from across the plant floor,” said Neha Joshi, product leader, GE VERNOVA APM. “Combining field insights with our analytics creates a more complete picture of asset health, helping teams identify, validate, and address issues more effectively. When our models flag a potential issue, we can use the same API to send robots to verify it and capture additional context. The integration has been seamless, making it easy to incorporate field insights into existing workflows and accelerate value for our customers.”

How Shift works

At its core, ANYbotics said that Shift AI serves as a shared intelligence layer that continuously learns from and feeds into every connected module. Because all four modules operate on the same living model of the plant, the company said that every data reading retains its asset context, precise location and operational history, meaning every inspection automatically enriches the entire platform. On this foundation, the company said that Shift delivers visibility, action and measurable impact through four interconnected modules designed to operate as a single, unified system:

• Shift Fleet takes the friction out of scaling from one robot to a full fleet, keeping robots on repetitive inspection duty while reliability engineers stay in the driver's seat, reviewing findings, prioritizing repairs and deciding what to fix. It schedules, monitors and controls the entire robot fleet from one place. Missions can be triggered directly from the distributed control system (DCS), ensuring critical assets are inspected consistently without adding workload to stretched teams.
• Shift Insight combines thermal, acoustic, visual and gas readings with operating conditions like motor speed, load and ambient temperature. A reading only counts as an anomaly when the context says it should, surfacing overheating, partial discharge, leaks and misalignment while they are still relatively harmless.
• Shift Connect turns confirmed anomalies directly into work orders inside the core operational software. Through productized connectors and standard REST APIs, Connect integrates seamlessly across five key categories:
  • Distributed Control Systems (DCS) like Yokogawa
  • Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tools like SAP and IBM Maximo
  • Asset Performance Management (APM) platforms such as GE Vernova APM
  • Digital twin or contextualization layers like Cognite and Oracle
    • ANYbotics said that this bi-directional integration allows process thresholds to automatically trigger new robot inspection rounds, while an integrated notification center delivers real-time alerts through everyday tools like email and Microsoft Teams, with SMS and WhatsApp support coming next.
• Shift Maps provides a live digital twin of a plant. It uses existing asset hierarchy (from asset to section to unit) and maps inspection targets into asset performance management (APM) and enterprise asset management (EAM) infrastructures. Importing asset structures by asset ID, so every reading lands on the right piece of equipment.

“Shift AI connects all four modules and is the shared intelligence they all work on. A reading doesn't just get stored; it arrives knowing which asset it belongs to, where that asset sits, what it looked like last time, and which work order it should become,” said Jacob Euler-Rolle, head of product management, workflow integration at ANYbotics. “The plant model from Maps, the inspection task from Fleet, the interpretation from Insight, and the action from Connect are one continuous workflow. And it runs both ways: a work order or a process alarm can send the fleet straight back to the asset. Every cycle through that workflow feeds Shift AI, which makes the next one smarter.”

Shift runs as a managed cloud platform operated by ANYbotics, with regional hosting so customer data resides where it is required, such as in the E.U. or the U.S. For specific IT/OT or regulatory requirements, ANYbotics said that Shift can also be deployed in a customer's own cloud environment or, where necessary, on-premises.

The company said that customer inspection data remains fully owned by the customer and is handled in strict compliance with data protection laws, including GDPR. ANYbotics holds ISO 27001 certification, and its ANYmal robots carry CE, IP67, ATEX, and IECEx certifications.

New and existing ANYbotics customers

ANYbotics said that for existing customers, they can expect a seamless transition from Data Navigator (ANYbotics’ existing asset management platform) to Shift that requires no action.

With the upcoming regular platform update, the company said that Data Navigator will automatically become Shift, carrying over all existing data, configurations, integrations and custom workflows without disruption. Because there is no migration project or technical overhead required, ANYbotics said that teams can log in and continue working as usual, benefiting from a refreshed platform identity, alongside the platform’s new, expanded capabilities.

“Shift makes it easy for SAP to integrate robot inspections into business processes,” said Adelya Fatykhova, global lead architect, embodied AI agents, physical AI, and robotics, SAP. “Physical AI on SAP Business AI Platform translates a business need into a Shift mission, with results stored back in SAP for follow-ups like maintenance order creation. Robot inspection missions through Shift enhance SAP's Autonomous Supply Chain for asset & field service with robot execution.”

Over the coming months, ANYbotics said that it plans to expand Shift’s capabilities beyond ANYmal hardware to support third-party robotic systems. The company said that the move is to position Shift as a hardware-agnostic command center for heterogeneous robotic workforces. Shift's API-first architecture also establishes it as a foundation for industrial AI agents to orchestrate robot fleets, assign tasks dynamically, and utilize inspection intelligence across broader plant automation workflows.

ANYbotics said that Shift is in use across more than 200 robot deployments and runs hundreds of thousands of inspections every month. The company said that this operational depth, built from real plants rather than software, is what sets it apart from generic robotic fleet management tools.