Teradyne Plans New Cobot Hub for Portfolio Companies UR and MiR

Teradyne (Boston, Mass.) has acquired a 334,000-ft²  building site in Odense into which it will invest $36 million to create a “cobot hub”, housing MiR and UR. At present, all manufacturing of MiR and UR robots occurs in Denmark, a company spokesperson told Plastics Technology, with the companies employing 160 and 450 employees respectively in the country. The spokesperson said the new site in Odense will house manufacturing for both companies, and while they could not share the specific impact the new site would have on capacity they said it would be “significant”, since the new hub will allow for twice the amount of staff as is currently employed at the existing two headquarters in Odense.

While details are not yet finalized, the spokesperson said all manufacturing will likely be moved to UR’s existing headquarters, which will become part of the new cobot hub. The newly acquired buildings would then house all other non-manufacturing activities. Once complete, the hub will include R&D; administrative and sales offices; engineering labs; extensive training and meeting rooms; and adjacent UR and MiR showrooms.

Teradyne, which acquired UR in 2015 and Mir in 2018, said in a release that to-date, it has invested more than half a billion dollars in the two Danish robotic companies. MiR supplies collaborative autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for industrial applications. UR makes a line of collaborative robots for various manufacturing industries, including plastics.