Collaborative robot provider Universal Robots (UR) and autonomous mobile robot (AMR) provider Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR) recently celebrated the grand opening of their new 215,000 square foot headquarters in Odense, Denmark. The new joint headquarters will house close to 600 employees.
“MiR is committed to being a one-stop-shop for material handling, continuously advancing our technology to meet the evolving needs of our large, global customers,” said Jean-Pierre Hathout, MiR president. “I'm thrilled to witness the transformative impact of our endeavors and to showcase MiR’s and UR’s offerings to our customers and partners at this state-of-the-art facility.”
The opening included a panel discussion featuring Deepu Talla, NVIDIA VP of robotics and edge computing, Rainer Brehm, Siemens Factory Automation CEO, and Ujjwal Kumar, Teradyne Robotics group president. The panelists discussed the use of physical AI across industries, underscoring the transformative power of advanced automation for businesses and workplaces.
“The launch of this new headquarters marks a significant milestone for Teradyne Robotics as we bring together two leading companies in robotics innovation,” said Kumar. “We will now have the optimal environment to evolve our technological capabilities, which are already in high demand.”
Collaboration will enable Siemens PLCs to control robots
Partners from UR and MiR's global ecosystems attended the opening event, including NVIDIA and Siemens, with whom Teradyne Robotics - the parent company of UR and MiR - and its companies have recently announced several collaborations.
“Since our foundation, UR has become a platform of choice for thousands of customers and hundreds of ecosystem partners,” said Kim Povlsen, UR president. “This beautiful building reflects our strong design philosophy and provides the perfect location for us to continue our mission to deliver automation for anyone, anywhere.”
Just before Hanover Messe 2024, Siemens announced its cooperation with two collaborative robot vendors, UR and JAKA, reported Samantha Mou, research analyst for Interact Analysis.
The collaboration will enable Siemens programmable logic controllers (PLCs) that support the Standard Robot Command Interface (SRCI) functions to translate and merge control instructions through its Totally Integrated Automation Portal (TIA Portal). This arrangement will enable engineers to use Siemens’ development environment to control robots without using robot programming languages.
Prior to this announcement, Siemens was already working in cooperation with Comau, Stäubli, Kawasaki, and Yaskawa Motoman on integrated robot control via SRCI. Mou reported ABB, KUKA, FANUC, Epson, and Techman, are also scheduled to come on board, and some other Japanese and Chinese suppliers are pending, including Yamaha and Estun.