Birthplace of the Cobot
Odense: A Robotics Life
It’s more than a robotics cluster. It’s rather a national treasure that daily grows more valuable. Plus, it’s a way of life that is as rich as the tech that it builds.
18 times in five years and, as it is unlikely that there will be 18 times more people to implement these,
we need to make the technology much quicker and easier to deploy.”
Enrico Krog Iversen, CEO, OnRobot
The city of Odense (Denmark) is smallish and semi-isolated (population 200k; the largest city on the island of Funen), and it’s also gifted: there are over 120 robotics companies within 18 miles of its center. A day of bicycling can see them all.
The Odense Municipality covers a tad over 117 square miles; that’s about one robotics company per square mile.
Sophia Waterfield has done a nice job in capturing the why of Odense’s robot origins, and also what the city means to the part of the tech industry it has helped to spawn, namely, the revolutionary cobot.
If there’s another 117 square miles anywhere else on the globe that aspires to build a livelihood for a tech industry with a huge, future upside, it would do well to clone Odense brick by brick. As Waterfield ably portrays it, Odense isn’t magic, but it’s pretty damn close.
Here’s the robotics life that Waterfield encountered on a chunk of island between Jutland and Zealand.
Sophia Waterfield
It’s not the first place you’d turn to for robotics expertise, but Denmark ranks seventh in the world for global robot density – the number of multipurpose industrial robots per 10,000 employees in the manufacturing sector.
The country has a substantial robotics base, including world-class manufacturers and academic programmes. Denmark hosts many full-scale test facilities and has a long tradition of developing solutions for complex processes in collaboration with end users.
It is home to the Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute, a high-tech and internationally recognised research centre. Its aim is to develop new technologies for the good of society and it has spawned companies such as Universal Robots. The South Denmark University has also produced robotics experts, and the Odense Robotics Cluster is home to 120 companies specialising in robotics.
Danish technology pioneers include Per Brinch Hansen, known for concurrent programming theory; Bjarne Stroustrup, who invented the C++ programming language; Janus Friis, the co-inventor of Skype; and Jens and Lars Rasmussen, the co-founders of Google Maps.
According to Enrico Krog Iversen, CEO and founder of OnRobot, the success of Denmark’s robotics scene dates back to the 1980s and Odense, a city of 180,000 on Funen, the country’s garden island. Odense is full of manor houses and castles and is known for its cultural and historical hotspots. But that’s not all – in the technology and manufacturing industry, Odense is synonymous with robotics.
“In the 1980s, Maersk was the first in Denmark to use robots for welding, painting and processing, and donated €10m to the University of Southern Denmark to allow it to continue its research in robotics,” says Iversen. “Subsequently, the university attracted extremely competent and bright professors, which contributed to the progress in the research.”
“Importantly, as a nation, Denmark understood early on that investing in automation not only mitigates against the growing employment gap but significantly increases productivity and efficiency, which is necessary to remain competitive with global players,” says Per Kloster Poulsen, director at Universal Robots. This innovative approach to growing its economy resulted in the government putting more investment into the automation and eventually robotics industries, as well as academic and private bodies making it a focus for research. This is what has led to “Denmark being widely considered a leading robotics nation,” according to Poulsen.
Denmark is a small country with a population of less than six million, which has meant it has often ‘worried’ about its manufacturing industry. But it is very forward-thinking. According to its official website, Denmark values trust, openness and “an almost total lack of corruption”, which makes it a good place for business. Its “flexicurity” model means it is easy to hire from its small pool of workers but also let them go if business conditions change. The population is supported by an education system that is free for students.
The rise of automation has opened up more opportunities for Danish businesses: “Labour shortages, especially in manufacturing industry, are a constant concern,” says Poulsen. “However, despite having a much smaller working population than the UK, Denmark is the fourth most productive country in the world, while the UK is ranked 17th. This success is underpinned by the economy’s mass adoption of new, flexible automation technologies, such as cobots.”
But while the potential to automate in Denmark is lower than the global average, according to McKinsey, the potential for the country to export is constantly growing with the need for automation overseas. The commercial breakthrough for the Danish robotics industry arrived in 2005, in the form of Universal Robots. The success of the company attracted talent and investment to the country and, specifically, Odense.
The robotics capital
The Odense Robotics Cluster, located towards the south of the city, is home to 129 companies, with 80% of them picking the location as their headquarters.
The cluster has grown by 50% since 2015. There are also over 40 education programmes within the cluster and over 10 research and education institutions. It serves as an ecosystem as well as a place of work; 78% of the companies in the cluster partner with one another.
It’s home to companies such as Universal Robots and OnRobot, which was created from a merger of three companies: On Robot, a plug-and-play electric gripper manufacturer in Denmark, OptoForce, a force/torque sensor provider based in Hungary, and Perception Robotics, another bio-inspired robot gripper firm in California
“Behind OnRobot lies the belief that the true value of robots depends on how and where we deploy them,” explains Iversen. “According to the International Federation of Robotics, the installed base for robots is set to increase 18 times in five years and, as it is unlikely that there will be 18 times more people to implement these, we need to make the technology much quicker and easier to deploy.”
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