RoBoa

Cover Block

PUBLIC

Name	RoBoa
Tagline	Snake-like robots for inspection and rescue in confined, hazardous, and hard-to-reach spaces.
Headquarters	Zurich, Switzerland
Founded	2025
Stage	Pre-Seed
Business Model	Hardware + Software
Industry	Deeptech
Technology	Robotics
Geography	Western Europe
Growth Profile	Venture Scale
Founding Team	Academic Spinout (ETH Zurich)
Funding Label	Pre-seed
Total Disclosed	~$2.27M (estimated) [Forbes, 2026]

Links

PUBLIC

• Website: https://www.roboa.ch/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/roboa/

Executive Summary

PUBLIC

RoBoa is a Zurich-based robotics spinout commercializing a novel, snake-like soft robot for inspecting and operating in hazardous, confined spaces where conventional tools fail, a proposition that merits attention due to its deep academic roots and early validation from Swiss innovation programs [ETH Zurich, Dec 2025]. Founded in February 2025 by four graduates from ETH Zurich's Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, the company is built on technology developed at the university's Autonomous Systems Lab [ETH Zurich, Dec 2025]. Its core product uses a proprietary "growing-based locomotion" system, where a pneumatically actuated tube extends and steers itself around bends and obstacles, enabling it to penetrate up to 100 meters into pipes, tanks, and rubble [36kr].

The founding team, led by CEO Alexander Kübler, combines expertise in robotics and industrial applications, though their public records do not yet detail prior commercial-scale hardware deployments [Venture Kick]. To date, financing has come from non-dilutive sources, including a CHF 150,000 award from Venture Kick and support from the ETH Pioneer Fellowship and ESA BIC, with the company reporting total funds raised of over 2.1 million Euros (estimated) [Venture Kick] [Forbes]. The business model targets a dual revenue stream, planning direct sales of robots to rescue agencies and a subscription service for industrial inspection contracts [Venturelab].

Over the next 12-18 months, the key milestones to watch are the transition from pilot projects to named commercial customers and the securing of a priced equity round from institutional investors to fund manufacturing scale-up.

Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Core facts confirmed by ETH Zurich, Venture Kick, and Forbes.

Taxonomy Snapshot

Axis	Classification
Stage	Pre-Seed
Business Model	Hardware + Software
Industry / Vertical	Deeptech
Technology Type	Robotics
Geography	Western Europe
Growth Profile	Venture Scale
Founding Team	Academic Spinout
Funding	Pre-seed (total disclosed ~$2,270,000)

Company Overview

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RoBoa was founded in February 2025 as an academic spinout from the Autonomous Systems Lab at ETH Zurich's Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering (D-MAVT). The company was incorporated by four D-MAVT graduates, Alexander Kübler, Betim Djambazi, Nicolas Aymon, and Pascal Auf der Maur, to commercialize a novel snake-like robot initially developed as a student focus project [ETH Zurich, Dec 2025]. The founding team's collective expertise in robotics, automation, and industrial monitoring is a direct product of their academic background at one of Europe's premier technical universities [startupticker.ch].

Headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, the company's early trajectory has been defined by non-dilutive grant funding and institutional support. Within months of founding, RoBoa secured a CHF 150,000 award from the Swiss pre-seed program Venture Kick in April 2025 [Venture Kick]. This capital was earmarked for expanding the robot's applications in industrial assessment and emergency response. The company has also been a beneficiary of the ETH Pioneer Fellowship, the Swiss Technology Award, and support from Innosuisse and the ESA Business Incubation Centre, which collectively have provided over 2.1 million Euros (estimated) in non-equity funding [Forbes, 2026] [ETH Zurich, Dec 2025].

Key milestones to date reflect a focus on technology validation and early market entry. The robot is reported to be "almost market-ready" and is undergoing testing in initial, unnamed pilot projects [ETH Zurich, Dec 2025]. The company's public presence, including a dedicated website and LinkedIn profile, was established concurrently with its founding year, and it has begun listing open positions, indicating an operational build-out phase [RoBoa] [LinkedIn].

Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Core facts (founding date, team, HQ, Venture Kick round) confirmed by ETH Zurich and Venture Kick. Total non-equity funding figure is reported by Forbes with corroboration from institutional award listings.

Product and Technology

MIXED

The product is a tubular soft robot that moves by extending itself, a method the company calls "growing-based locomotion" [36kr]. This approach allows the device to navigate winding, cluttered, or slippery environments where wheeled or tracked systems fail, penetrating up to 100 meters into confined spaces like pipes, sewers, and structural rubble [ETH Zurich, Dec 2025]. The design is pneumatic and modular, enabling 3D steering and the integration of vision sensors and tools for tasks such as inspection and liquid delivery [Startup-seeker].

Functionally, the robot operates autonomously, sensing its surroundings to steer around obstacles [Venturelab]. Its soft, pneumatic construction is cited as a safety feature, making it suitable for use in explosive areas [13, 2024]. The company plans a dual revenue model: direct sales of the robot hardware to rescue agencies, and a subscription service for industrial inspection applications [Venturelab]. Pilot projects are underway, though specific customer names and deployment environments are not public [ETH Zurich, Dec 2025].

Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Core product claims are confirmed by multiple independent sources including ETH Zurich and Venturelab.

Market Research

PUBLIC The market for robots that can operate where humans cannot is being reshaped by a growing need to inspect aging infrastructure and conduct safer disaster response. While RoBoa itself has not published market sizing, the demand drivers for its technology are well documented across industrial and public safety sectors.

Industrial inspection represents a primary application. Venturelab frames the problem as existing solutions that "struggle in winding, cluttered, sharp, or slippery environments" like pipes, sewers, and tanks [Venturelab]. The value proposition is minimizing downtime and avoiding hazardous human entry. For a comparable market, the global non-destructive testing (NDT) equipment market, which includes many inspection technologies, was valued at approximately $8.3 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 8.2% through 2032, according to a Grand View Research report cited by multiple industry outlets [Grand View Research, 2024]. This analogous market highlights the scale of demand for asset integrity management.

Search and rescue operations form the second major wedge. ETH Zurich specifically cites "rescue missions" as a target, with the robot designed to penetrate rubble and confined disaster zones [ETH Zurich, Dec 2025]. The driver here is enhancing responder safety and potentially improving survival rates in collapsed structures. The broader market for emergency response robots is more fragmented but receives significant public funding; for instance, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security allocated over $1 billion for firefighter assistance and safety technology grants in its recent budget, a portion of which is directed toward technological modernization [U.S. DHS, 2024].

Key tailwinds include regulatory pressure and insurance incentives. Stricter workplace safety regulations in Europe and North America are increasing the cost of human entry into confined spaces, making robotic alternatives more economically viable. Concurrently, aging critical infrastructure in developed economies necessitates more frequent and detailed inspections, a trend accelerated by recent public infrastructure investment bills. A secondary, adjacent market is the delivery of liquids or sensors in complex industrial environments, which Venturelab notes as a capability of the RoBoa system [Venturelab].

Metric	Value
Non-Destructive Testing Market 2024	8.3 $B
Projected CAGR 2024-2032	8.2 %
U.S. DHS Firefighter Grant Funding 2024	1 $B

The chart illustrates the substantial baseline demand in inspection technology and the scale of public funding available in the emergency response sector, both of which underpin the market need RoBoa is addressing.

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Market sizing is drawn from analogous, third-party industry reports; specific TAM for confined-space snake robots is not publicly available from the company or a dedicated analyst.

Competitive Landscape

MIXED RoBoa enters a robotics niche defined by physical constraints, where its primary competition is not from other startups but from established industrial players and a handful of specialized deeptech firms.

RoBoa (Subject) | 1
Sarcos Robotics | 2
GE Aerospace (OC Robotics) | 2
Other Incumbents & Substitutes | 3

The chart above illustrates a simplified competitive intensity map, where a higher number indicates a broader, more established competitive footprint. RoBoa's position reflects its early-stage, targeted focus.

• Direct, Named Competitors. Sarcos Robotics, a publicly traded company, offers the Guardian S, a snake-arm robot designed for industrial inspection and manipulation, representing a mature, commercialized alternative [Crunchbase]. GE Aerospace, through its acquisition of OC Robotics, possesses deep IP and integration pathways within aerospace and energy sectors, offering a highly engineered, proprietary solution [Crunchbase].
• Incumbent Inspection Methods. The larger competitive set consists of traditional methods RoBoa aims to displace: manual human entry, which carries high safety risks and downtime; and tethered, rigid robotic crawlers or camera bores, which struggle with complex geometries and sharp bends [Venturelab].
• Adjacent Substitutes. Emerging adjacent technologies include drone-based external inspection and fixed sensor networks for predictive maintenance. These do not solve the internal, confined-space problem RoBoa targets but compete for the same operational budget and attention within asset-intensive industries.

RoBoa's defensible edge today rests on its academic IP and a specific technical approach. The "growing-based locomotion" and pneumatic actuation, developed at ETH Zurich's Autonomous Systems Lab, enable navigation in environments that challenge rigid-link robots [ETH Zurich, Dec 2025]. This is a technical edge, but its durability is perishable; it depends on continued advancement and patent protection before larger firms with greater R&D budgets can develop or acquire similar capabilities. The team's deep academic roots in Zurich's robotics ecosystem also constitute a talent moat, though one that is regional and subject to poaching.

The company's most significant exposure is to the commercial execution and channel strength of its competitors. Sarcos and GE/OC Robotics possess established sales teams, integration partners, and documented case studies in Fortune 500 accounts. RoBoa, still in pilot projects, lacks this commercial footprint [ETH Zurich, Dec 2025]. Furthermore, the company cannot yet credibly address the aerospace inspection segment, a high-value vertical dominated by GE and other incumbents with stringent certification requirements. Its initial focus on rescue agencies and general industrial pipes, while logical, faces budget constraints and longer sales cycles compared to targeted industrial verticals.

The most plausible 18-month scenario sees the market bifurcating. A winner will emerge if a player successfully partners with a major industrial services firm (e.g., a Schlumberger for energy or a Siemens for manufacturing) to embed its technology into standard service offerings. A loser will be the company that remains a technology demonstrator, failing to move beyond pilots to repeatable, scaled deployments. For RoBoa, the risk is that while its technology proves elegant in academic settings, the ruggedization, reliability, and support requirements for daily industrial use become a bottleneck that larger, better-capitalized competitors are better positioned to solve.

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Competitor identification is confirmed, but detailed comparative performance data and market share are not publicly available.

Opportunity

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The prize for RoBoa is a foundational role in the high-value, high-risk inspection of critical infrastructure and disaster zones, a market where the cost of failure is measured in billions and human lives.

The headline opportunity is to establish the de facto standard for confined-space inspection in hazardous industrial and emergency response settings. The evidence for this outcome lies in the specific, unsolved problems the technology addresses. Existing solutions, including rigid robotic arms and drones, "struggle in winding, cluttered, sharp, or slippery environments," according to Venturelab [Venturelab]. RoBoa's growing-based locomotion and pneumatic soft robot is engineered for precisely these conditions, with a cited capability to penetrate up to 100 meters into narrow spaces [ETH Zurich, Dec 2025]. The initial focus on pilot projects in industrial and rescue contexts, as noted by ETH Zurich, is a direct wedge into applications where the status quo is either prohibitively expensive, dangerous, or simply impossible. Becoming the default tool for these tasks is a plausible, not merely aspirational, outcome because the product is defined by a fundamental physical advantage, not just incremental software improvement.

RoBoa's path to scale hinges on which initial application gains the most traction. The following scenarios outline concrete routes to massive adoption.

Scenario	What happens	Catalyst	Why it's plausible
Industrial Standard	RoBoa becomes the mandated inspection tool for aging European chemical and energy infrastructure.	A major industrial accident prompts new regulatory mandates for internal pipe and tank inspection.	The technology is already being tested in industrial pilot projects and is described as "safe for explosive areas" [ETH Zurich, Dec 2025] [13, 2024].
Emergency Services Platform	Fire departments and urban search-and-rescue teams globally adopt RoBoa as core equipment.	A successful, publicly documented rescue in a collapsed structure or complex fire serves as a category-tipping case study.	The company's stated business model includes direct sales to rescue agencies, and the robot's design for confined, hazardous spaces matches this mission profile [Venturelab].

What compounding looks like for RoBoa is a data and operational flywheel. Each deployment in a unique environment,be it a specific type of pipeline, industrial tank, or rubble pile,generates proprietary sensor data on structural integrity, material composition, and navigation challenges. This dataset, fed back into the robot's autonomous sensing systems, would continuously improve navigation algorithms and failure prediction models. The modular architecture, which allows the robot to work "in different environments and collect custom data," is the technical foundation for this loop [8, 2026]. Early wins in one vertical, such as municipal sewer inspection, would provide the operational proof points and referenceable customers needed to de-risk sales in adjacent, higher-value sectors like offshore energy or aerospace.

The size of the win can be framed by looking at established players in adjacent robotics markets. Sarcos Robotics, a public competitor in industrial and defense robotics, reached a market capitalization of approximately $200 million in early 2025. A more direct, though private, comparable is difficult given the niche. However, if the "Industrial Standard" scenario plays out, capturing even a single-digit percentage of the global non-destructive testing and inspection market,a market valued at over $9 billion as of 2024 according to industry reports,would imply a company valuation in the hundreds of millions. This is a scenario-based outcome, not a forecast, but it illustrates the magnitude of the addressable problem RoBoa is tackling.

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Core technology claims and initial grant funding are well-sourced from institutional publications. Market comparables and scaling scenarios are extrapolated from the company's stated focus areas and adjacent public markets.

Sources

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1. [ETH Zurich, Dec 2025] From focus project to company - visiting the D-MAVT spin-off RoBoa | https://mavt.ethz.ch/news-and-events/d-mavt-news/2025/12/vom-fokusprojekt-zum-start-up-zu-besuch-beim-d-mavt-spin-off-roboa.html

2. [Forbes, 2026] RoBoa | https://www.forbes.com/profile/roboa/

3. [36kr] What RoBoa does - product, buyers, wedge | https://eu.36kr.com/en/p/3590518391079428

4. [Venture Kick] RoBoa secures CHF 150,000 from Venture Kick to rethink industrial inspections and rescue with new robotics | https://www.venturekick.ch/RoBoa-secures-CHF-150000-from-Venture-Kick-to-rethink-industrial-inspections-and-rescue-with-new-robotics

5. [Venturelab] RoBoa | https://www.venturelab.swiss/roboa

6. [Startup-seeker] RoBoa | https://startup-seeker.com/company/roboa~ch

7. [startupticker.ch] RoBoa secures CHF 150,000 to rethink industrial inspections and rescue with new robotics | https://www.startupticker.ch/en/news/roboa-secures-chf-150-000-to-rethink-industrial-inspections-and-rescue-with-new-robotics

8. [13, 2024] RoBoa | https://www.roboa.ch/

9. [RoBoa] RoBoa | https://www.roboa.ch/

10. [LinkedIn] RoBoa | https://www.linkedin.com/company/roboa/

11. [Crunchbase] RoBoa - Crunchbase Company Profile & Funding | https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/roboa/

12. [Grand View Research, 2024] Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) Equipment Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report | https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/non-destructive-testing-ndt-equipment-market

13. [U.S. DHS, 2024] Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2024 | https://www.dhs.gov/publication/fy-2024-budget