[Universal Robots robotic arms lifting box at company’s new “cobot hub” headquarters, shared with MiR]
[MiR mobile robot moving to lift crate]
[Universal Robots robotic arm fitted with suction cups]
[MiR mobile robots moving boxes]
[Worker monitoring robots on computer]
[Universal Robots and MiR new “cobot hub” shared headquarters]
[Cobot hub interior]
[Universal Robots president Kim Povlsen]
Kim Povlsen (interview): “We’ve been really excited to build this building. We’ve been doing it for a couple of years. The reason we built it in the first place was to under one roof have all the great minds of Universal Robots, from marketing, sales, and engineering, particularly, with the great minds from MiR. So, we’re expecting new types of innovation to occur.”
[Workers calibrating Universal Robot robotic arm on factory floor]
Kim Povlsen (interview): “If you go back where we started, obviously the most mature industries in automation were the first ones to get started, also with collaborative robots or cobots, like the automotive industry. But what we’re seeing over the last, especially the last couple of years, you’re seeing pharmaceutical companies really leaning into robotics. You’re seeing food and beverage companies really leaning into robotics, and logistics is a big one. Logistics is growing in general as an industry because we like to order stuff from home that we need to get delivered. So, how are those industries automating their businesses as well? So, we’re seeing the need for automation in pretty much every industry out there.”
[Universal Robots and Siemens AI robot demo, recognising and placing objects in different boxes]
Anders Billesoe Beck (interview): “AI is going to be a breakthrough within robotics, there’s no doubt about it. And I think what we’ve seen in so many other industries is AI is the tool to bring the human reasoning into something that’s more automated, and that’s really some of the barriers for robotics today. It is really difficult to get the robot to have that kind of common sense to either understand what you intend to do or how to resolve unforeseen things that happens. So today, AI is really becoming a superpower, both to make the robot easier to program, but also to give them that sort of problem-solving capabilities and flexibilities that is sort of associated with human intelligence.”
[Universal Robots and Nvidia AI robot demo, inspecting circuit boards]
Anders Billesoe Beck (interview): “So, what we’re seeing here is a fully AI generated quality inspection application made by the integrated technologies of Universal Robots and Nvidia. The robot moves around to a number of electronics components, quality assuring that all the components are there. But all the motions in between is fully generated by AI. So, it knows, it calculates where to go, it calculates to avoid any obstacles in the workspace. So, everything is run fully automatically.”
[Universal Robot robotic arm calibrating on factory floor]
[Worker on factory floor]
Soeren Elmer Kristensen (interview): “It is a milestone. It’s a big milestone, I would say, for cobots, in general. A big milestone for Danish robotics. First of all, it’s the first, as you said, in the world, this cobot hub. Innovation, technology, collaboration, but also that we as an ecosystem are capable of keeping our big industries within the country. That’s also a big milestone.”
[Worker on factory floor]
[Universal Robot robotic arm calibrating on factory floor]
[MiR mobile robot lifting box]
Kim Povlsen (interview): “It’s competitive as ever, which is a great thing because, you know, if you go five, six years back, there was only a handful of cobot vendors out there. I think we’re well above 100 now, out there. So, it’s a booming market, it’s growing, hence there will be a lot of new competitors coming in. But it’s also a kind of acknowledging that there is a real market out there and it’s going to be bigger and there is a real need. We see it already, but a lot of new competition coming in, it’s making it the very obvious.”
[Universal Robots and MiR new “cobot hub” shared headquarters]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.