Voith now relies on Universal Robots - Franka Emika passé?

Former Kuka main shareholder Voith famously took a big-money stake in Munich-based robotics startup Franka Emika in 2018(link). At the same time, Voith wanted to integrate Robitc's Franka robots into industry, as the company had been doing with Kuka for years.

Subsequently, I had repeatedly heard from the Voith environment that no Franka project had yet been successful, but nevertheless, the news of the Automation Practicethat Voith Roboitcs now integrates Universal Robots and that Franka's Panda has already been Voith website was removed was surprising. This is all the more true as Franka Emika actually wanted to launch an industrial robot (i.e. higher payload and IP54 instead of the current IP20) this year. Either there is one problem after another with this one, or the chemistry between Voith and Franka is massively disturbed. However, Voith Robitics did not seem as agitated to the outside world as the two other Franka partners German Robotics and TQ Systems.In December 2019, Voith Robotics had already moved its headquarters from the Franka Emika site in Munich-Schwabing to Garching. In February 2020, a Voith managing director had left. Garching is north of Munich on the way to Nuremberg and thus between the two locations of Universal Robots distributor Jugard + Künstner. (In a previous version of this article, J+K had been incorrectly referred to as an integrator). Therefore, the new partner is also a bit spectacular from UR's point of view.

A video from obviously happier days:

The author of this blog is available for market research or even a walk through your production/manufacturing or by phone at a fixed price(detail), and then make specific proposals for the use of cobots and other robots incl. funding opportunities. Both SMEs and large companies are visited. Among other things in Bavaria a 50% investment promotion is conceivable. The standard book on cobots also comes from him.