It's All About the Application!

The Real Goal of Robotic Automation

Ten years ago, in 2015, I joined Universal Robots, a pioneer in collaborative robots. We had a strict rule for our exhibition demos: "We don't demonstrate a complete application." At the time, the focus was on impressive robot features like free-drive and collision detection. From a brand perspective, this approach was effective for increasing brand awareness and lowering the barrier to entry for robotic automation. However, it often overshadowed the ultimate goal of automation.

After a while, we realized a significant gap existed: our customers were struggling to implement robots effectively on their production lines. This experience made it clear that automation isn't just about the robot itself; it's about the complete robotic application that truly automates a specific manual task. This realization led Universal Robots to establish its Universal Robots+ ecosystem to recruit application partners. I was even a part of this shift, joining the Global Application Management team at the Denmark HQ to help lead the charge. (I'm proud to have been a part of that dream team.)

It's easy to get caught up in the technology, but for industrial robots, the purpose is simple: a robot should automate a manual task. And that's where the application comes in.

There is a well-known phrase in the field of industrial robots: "A robot is incomplete machinery. A robot must be integrated into a system to perform meaningful tasks." Historically, the robotics industry has relied heavily on highly capable system integrators to deliver these complete applications. But this reliance on complex, costly system integration has become a major bottleneck, leading to inefficiencies in both time and money.

This is where we at Riibotics come in. While most autonomous forklift suppliers focus on technical specifications, we are committed to solving a very narrow customer problem. In other words, we've designed a robotic solution for one very specific application. Our first target: floor-to-floor pallet transport in brownfield warehouses. This problem then derived our key product features: minimizing deployment time and cost, maximizing user experience, and eliminating edge case errors.

Imagine a future where a non-professional operator can set up robots to autonomously navigate and perform material handling tasks in a new facility in just two hours. This is the future Riibotics is building.