dormakaba, ANYbotics and LEGIC tested the autonomous ANYmal robot at the Whitegate power plant in County Cork, Ireland. During inspection routes, the robot independently requested access and passed through doors equipped with an access control system. dormakaba Group reported the results of the pilot project.
During the trials, the ANYmal robot used a secure digital identity to request access to controlled areas. The dormakaba access management system verified it according to the same rules that apply to authorised personnel. Once access was approved, the automatic door system opened the door and the robot continued its route without human intervention.
According to dormakaba, ANYmal operated at the facility for several weeks. During this period, it repeatedly requested access and passed through controlled doors while carrying out inspections.
“Autonomous robots are becoming part of the workforce in industrial environments. Like people, they need reliable and secure access to the areas where they perform their tasks. Together with our partners, we are demonstrating how access management can enable robots to move safely and autonomously through controlled areas, while keeping access control in the hands of the operator,” said dormakaba CEO Till Reuter.
ANYbotics developed the autonomous mobile robot and robotics platform. The company was founded in 2016 as a spin-off from ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, and is headquartered in Zurich.
LEGIC, headquartered in Wetzikon, Switzerland, provided the secure digital identity technology. dormakaba, headquartered near Zurich, supplied the access management and door automation systems.
“This is about authenticating autonomous systems: providing a trusted identity, effectively a credential for the robot. With this project, we are taking a significant step towards physical AI by extending LEGIC technologies for secure access identities from people and objects to machines,” said LEGIC CEO Mehdi Elhaoussine.
For industrial facilities, access-controlled doors create a distinct technical barrier to autonomous robotics. A robot may be able to follow a route independently, but without digital identification it cannot enter an area where access is controlled by a security system. In the pilot project, the operator assigns permissions to the robot in the same way as for other authorised users.
“Our customers do not buy robots; they buy a way to solve their operational challenges: reducing unplanned downtime and reducing the number of people in hazardous areas. The impact is measured by how many critical assets our robots inspect, how often and how reliably. Every access-controlled door imposed a hard limit on that coverage. Together with dormakaba and LEGIC, ANYmal now has a trusted identity managed by the facility’s own access system and passes through these doors like any authorised employee — under the same rules and with the same audit trail. The pilot project confirmed this under real operating conditions, and we will now make this function an optional capability across the entire ANYmal fleet,” said ANYbotics co-founder and CEO Péter Fankhauser.
The trial took place at the 445 MW Whitegate combined-cycle gas power plant.
The partners are also exploring the use of the same mechanism for lifts, gates and turnstiles. The companies presented the pilot project on 17 September 2026 at the LEGIC connect26 conference in Zurich.
OKNA.ua previously reported that Japan’s NSG Group had introduced an AI-based workplace safety platform at plants in ten countries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zxNuQnY92w