Need for automation on the longer horizon remains unchanged: Kim Povlsen

India's growing electronics, automotive, and e-commerce sectors have increased demand for collaborative robots (cobots) for assembly, packaging, and welding. 

Universal Robots, a Danish company that makes cobots, has sold more than 75,000 cobots worldwide. Its CEO Kim Povlsen said that the cobot market is still in its early stages and that they have only captured 3% of the market. He also talks about his plans for India, the impact of cobots on jobs, and how he is using machine learning (ML) in robotics.

Edited excerpts: 

Q. What are your expectations and plans for the India market? 

India is an incredibly interesting country and market for us. It's rapidly growing in terms of manufacturing. In 2022, exports in manufacturing grew 40% which might be the highest in the world. 

A lot of studies show that about half of businesses in India will start integrating robotic automation within the next year. People were used to doing manually processing, moving things from one place to another. Instead of moving boxes, those people are learning to operate robots. 

Next year we are planning to open a training center in India, which will provide the opportunity to educate on how to use these robots. It will be open for partners, customers who want to use it. We have 100 such training centers across the world and this will be our first in India. 

Q. What kind of growth have you seen in India? How has covid and current economic downturn impacted demand? 

Customers in India who were using a single robot in 2015 now have close to 100 robots. 

Every year we have seen strong double digit growth. During covid we were still growing but the number was smaller. After covid we saw an exploding demand for cobots.  

Due to the uncertain economic environment we are facing, some companies are holding back on investment. We are seeing a little bit of pause more than a slow down in adoption.  But the need is still there. Need for automation on the longer horizon remains unchanged. 

Q. Do you have any immediate plans to set up a cobot manufacturing plant in India? 

We are going to add over time additional factories for production of robots in other parts of the world for a couple of reasons. One, we want to be closer to local markets. Two, there is a sustainability element.  We don't want to send robots around but build them where they are used. We want to have local factories in our biggest markets. We are looking at many different countries for local manufacturing and India is one of them. 

Q. Which sectors have shown highest adoption and how are they using them? 

In India, we see a lot of similarities with other markets. There are a couple of industries that are the fastest growing across the globe. One is welding using cobots. We are also seeing repetitive and manual labor such as packaging and palletising being done by cobots.

In India, the automotive industry is really picking up cobots for certain types of tasks. We are also seeing very fast growth in the electronics industry in India. They are using it for quality inspection and assembly. Another fast growing market for us in India is FMCG. We are seeing strong demand for our type of automation to package things efficiently. 

We are also fulfilling specific requirements for the pharma sector in India. 

Q. How are cobots impacting jobs? 

Many of our customers see it as an extension of their workforce. They are seeing it as an opportunity to take on some of the tasks that are dull, dirty and dangerous. Very often people who were doing those jobs are now operating these cobots. In welding, one welder was able to do one welding at a time, now that welder is managing 6-7 cobots.  

I think we will see a different type of manufacturing in the future where people work alongside robots. Robots will do what they are best at and people will do what they are best at. 

Q. How important is the role of AI in robotics? How are you using them in your products? 

We are investing heavily into certain types of ML. Our job is to make automation available to anyone. In order to do that we need to make deployment and integration of cobot as  simple as possible even for small companies. We are using ML based tools to learn from the large customer base we have to simplify a lot of procedures. 

The objective is to make robots better at assisting customers and improve efficiency levels so that even a non-robotic expert can get the most out of them. 

Image credit: Universal Robots