ANYbotics ANYmal D vs Boston Dynamics Spot: Inspecting Industrial Facilities

On paper the differences show up immediately. Spot weighs 33.8 kg, stands 61 cm tall, moves at up to 1.6 m/s and carries up to 14 kg on a swappable mounting plate. The enclosure is rated IP54, and the operating range runs from −20°C to 55°C. The 564 Wh battery gives roughly 90 minutes, and a full charge takes an hour. As standard the robot has all-round cameras with a 4 m range; everything else is added by the user.

The ANYmal D walks more slowly, at up to 0.75 m/s (the manufacturer quotes a range of 0.23–0.75 m/s), and carries up to 10 kg of additional payload, but it is better sealed at IP67. Its sensing is built in: a camera with 20x optical zoom, a thermal camera covering −40 to 550°C, a 360° LiDAR scanner, an ultrasonic microphone (0–384 kHz), six depth cameras, floodlights of up to 3,790 lm and two 8th-generation Intel i7 processors. The robot connects over WiFi and 4G/LTE. Fast charging to 70% takes 100 minutes and a full charge three hours, with a range of up to 2 km per charge. Spot is therefore more than twice as fast and carries more, while the ANYmal D offers better protection against water and dust and a far richer sensor set out of the box.

Neither manufacturer publishes a price list. ANYbotics sells the ANYmal D only on request for a quotation, so nothing reliable can be written about its price. For Spot there is an external source from mid-2020 quoting USD 74,500. Converted today that would be around PLN 288,777 (≈ EUR 66,060), but it is an indicative figure rather than a current offer, and a configuration with an arm or a sensor package costs more than the base robot.

There is no confirmed official distributor for either model in Poland. Buying means talking to the manufacturers' sales teams, often under an enterprise-type contract. Beyond the robot itself you need to budget for route-planning software, service, operator training and spare batteries. The Spot calculation is unpacked in the article “Boston Dynamics Spot: Price, Uses and Availability in Poland”, and general rules for costing robots are covered in “Humanoid Robot TCO: How to Calculate Total Cost”.

The ANYmal D is aimed at energy, water and gas utilities, heavy industry and mining. The thermal camera picks out overheating bearings, the ultrasonic microphone hears leaks of compressed air or gas, and the lighting lets it work in dark halls. This is cyclical-round work in a factory, where the robot collects data from the same points and compares it with earlier passes.

Spot has a wider field: industrial inspection, documenting progress on a construction site (the same route, the same shot, every week) and patrolling sites in a security role. Its strength is the mounting plate, which can carry a scanner, a thermal camera or a gas sensor. Anyone who needs one robot for several different tasks will choose Spot. Anyone with a single, well-defined diagnostic task will gain from the ANYmal’s ready-made kit. For smaller plants that want Polish-language support there is a third route, the MAB Robotics Honey Badger 4.0.