Anchor Robotics raises $16M to launch UI Bots, physical robots for usability testing in retail spaces

Tech · 4 min read

UI Bots can mimic touch patterns, pressure, and timing variations to stress-test kiosk interfaces, ticket machines, and in-store tablets under realistic conditions. Anchor Robotics positions the robots as a way to catch ergonomic and software issues that traditional lab testing may miss.

The funding, led by FieldWorks Capital, will expand manufacturing and deploy pilot fleets to retail partners. Anchor Robotics also offers software that aggregates robot test runs, surfaces flaky interactions, and produces prioritized defect lists for designers and engineers.

Retailers piloting the bots reported uncovering edge-case behaviors (gloved input, swipe variance) earlier in development. Anchor Robotics plans to add remote orchestration so teams can schedule multi-location, unattended test runs and tie results into existing QA dashboards.