That started to vary with the partnership between the shipyard and the college. Within the ’90s, that relationship received an enormous enhance when the muse behind the Mærsk transport firm funded the creation of the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Institute (MMMI), a middle devoted to learning autonomous techniques. The Lindø shipyard ultimately wound down its robotics program, however analysis continued on the MMMI. College students flocked to the institute to check robotics. And it was there that three researchers had the concept for a extra light-weight, versatile, and easy-to-use industrial robotic arm. That concept would turn out to be a startup known as Common Robots, Odense’s first massive robotics success story. In 2015, the US semiconductor testing big Teradyne acquired Common Robots for $285 million. That was a big turning level for robotics within the metropolis. It was proof, says cofounder Kristian Kassow, that an Odense robotics firm may make it with out being tied to a selected challenge, just like the earlier shipyard work. It was a sign of legitimacy that attracted extra recognition, expertise, and funding to the native robotics scene.
Kim Povlsen, president and CEO of Common Robots, says it was important that Teradyne stored the corporate’s most important base in Odense and maintained the Danish work tradition, which he describes as nonhierarchical and extremely collaborative. This extends past firm partitions, with staff typically joyful to share their experience with others within the native trade. “It’s like this symbiotic factor, and it really works rather well,” he says. Common Robots positions itself as a platform firm slightly than only a producer, inviting others to work with its tech to create robotic options for various sectors; the corporate’s robotic arms might be present in car-part factories, on development websites, in pharmaceutical laboratories, and on wine-bottling strains. It’s a development play for the corporate, however it additionally provides alternatives to startups within the neighborhood.
In 2018 Teradyne purchased a second Odense robotics startup, Cell Industrial Robots, which was based by Jacobsen, the Star Wars fan who labored on the ship-welding robots in his college days. The corporate makes robots for inner transportation—for instance, to hold pallets or tow carts in a warehouse. The sale has allowed Jacobsen to spend money on different robotics initiatives, together with Capra, a maker of out of doors cellular robots, the place he’s now CEO.
The success of those two giant robotics corporations, which collectively make use of round 800 folks in Odense, created a ripple impact, bringing each funding and enterprise acumen into the robotics cluster, says Søren Elmer Kristensen, CEO of the government-funded group Odense Robotics.