Patrick Schwarzkopf leads the Robotics and Automation Association at VDMA, with about 400 member companies. He says Europe is squeezed in the middle between China, where the humanoid factories that produce at scale are, and a US that is banning imports of humanoid and mobile robots. He came back from Shenzhen describing a market where you fill a shopping basket with fingers, hands, arms and a head and go home to build your own humanoid.

In this interview from The Robot Bureau, Rogier and Lei sit down with Patrick Schwarzkopf, Managing Director of VDMA Robotics + Automation, at the Humanoid Robots Summit Europe in Stuttgart.

Patrick sees no gap in European mechatronics. Europe is strong in the drives, actuators and sensors a humanoid depends on, and by his count one robot can need 20 to 40 drives, yet the factories that produce at scale are in China. Start-ups raise a first round, run short when it is time to scale and end up sold abroad, a valley of death he wants pension funds and insurers to help close, the way France changed its rules so institutional investors put more money into robotics. Germany's SPRIND agency offers up to €7.2 million per team in its Next Frontier Robotics challenge, and Wandercraft is installing 350 robots in Renault factories within the next year or so.

"You cannot win a game if you play in defensive mode."

The US ban on foreign humanoid and mobile robots is a big problem for European makers of mobile robots, who can still export their old certified models but need to certify each new generation within a year or so. Patrick wants Europe to answer with its own supply chain from component to finished humanoid, and with a master plan and a north star, as China had for robotics. Public buyers in care, healthcare and critical infrastructure could give European start-ups their first customers.

Rogier and Lei cover: why Europe stopped arguing about whether robots need legs, why Patrick does not expect a humanoid winter, whether a transatlantic certification bridge is possible, how China makes humanoids popular with its public, and the driverless taxi ride that impressed Patrick most in Shenzhen.

Chapters:
00:00 VDMA and the Humanoid Robotics 2040 study
00:30 What Europe stands to lose
02:25 Playing to win instead of defending
03:32 Signs of acceleration in Europe
05:32 How likely is a humanoid winter
08:09 Safety, world models and public acceptance
11:32 The FCC ban and a transatlantic bridge
14:34 Public procurement and the valley of death
18:56 Europe needs a north star
20:26 Shenzhen's supply chain and Europe's components
24:04 Scale baby scale

Watch the video version on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L2tyUvX_bM

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheVDMA

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Francesco Ferro has been building humanoids for more than 20 years, and he says that when he spoke about bipedal humanoid robots, everybody told him it would never work. He was named Robotics CEO of the Year in 2024. PAL Robotics now has around 120 employees, opened in Toulouse in 2020 and in Bari in 2023, and he hopes to open in Germany this year. In this conversation he explains where he sees Europe in the race between the US and China, and what Europe can build on.

In this interview from The Robot Bureau, Rogier and Lei sit down with Francesco Ferro, CEO and co-founder of PAL Robotics, at the Humanoid Robots Summit Europe in Stuttgart.

As Francesco sees it, the US is spending to become the brain of all robotics and China, especially with government money, to be the only producer of the robot supply chain. Europe sits in the middle and, in his words, wakes up a little late, like always. His case against chasing a big valuation is about ownership, because the biggest venture capital funds are in the US or China, and once someone enters the shares, governments have no tools to stop a company from being bought by someone else. A company from Abu Dhabi helped PAL with different projects as it grew, and PAL uses components from China, Germany, Italy and Spain depending on price, quality and delivery time.

"Europe is just in the middle. We are now, like always, wake up a little bit late."

Francesco is against raising taxes on imports and wants Europe to work with China, the US, Japan and Korea, while keeping the know-how and not giving away, for example, the cheap production or the batteries in Europe. The Vienna Statement, as he describes it, asks that robots help people rather than substitute them, that Europe thinks long term, and that the more conservative companies in Europe open the door to collaboration. He also says the big companies PAL works with trust open source more and more, and Sony closing its Aibo section and never opening the code is his example of what happens when a company closes its code.

Rogier and Lei cover: how the cobot changed what people expect from robots, why Francesco does not see one dominant monopoly as the European way, what the Kinect gaming camera taught PAL about reusing parts from other industries, what PAL wants to show with industrial proofs of concept in the next year, and why he calls himself crazy for refusing to measure success by valuation.

Chapters:
00:00 Francesco, PAL Robotics and euRobotics
01:23 Robotics CEO of the Year 2024
02:45 From cobots to the US-China race
06:02 The Vienna Statement
07:22 What Europe can compete on
10:02 What PAL Robotics builds
13:53 Sourcing, the FCC ban and sovereignty
17:56 Why PAL is not VC funded
20:42 Ethics and a different idea of success
23:22 PAL's next 12 months
24:22 Open source and the Aibo lesson

Watch the video version on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0OZehrG5BM

Follow euRobotics
Org website: https://eu-robotics.net/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/euRobotics

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Company website: https://pal-robotics.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/PALRobotics

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Host Lei Li: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leilibeyondthenow/
Host Rogier Bikker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogierbikker/

Swisslog automates warehouses where robot cells already depalletise and pick, and its AI lead Jan Andreas Daske expects the first humanoid prototypes to be working in its sites within two years.

Swisslog is a KUKA company, and KUKA's majority owner is China's Midea Group. Jan sees humanoids unloading trucks and carrying orders from picking station to packing station 24 hours a day, and the problem he wants solved first is a plain one, what happens when a humanoid falls over on the way to the picking station or its battery runs low.

In this interview from The Robot Bureau, Rogier and Lei sit down with Jan Andreas Daske, Senior Director Global AI & Industry Intelligence Lead at Swisslog, at the Humanoid Robots Summit Europe in Stuttgart in September.

In the high-throughput core of a Swisslog site the work is already automated, with robot cells building mixed pallets and AI picking arms taking single items out of boxes, so Jan looks for humanoids at the handovers where a person still steps in, at the truck dock and in manual pick zones. Brownfield warehouses were built for people, which in his view may make a humanoid the best way in, and it still needs a software layer that coordinates it with the classical automation already on the floor. Swisslog sells that layer as its own SynQ software or as SAP EWM, on top of KUKA AMP, and by Jan's account the same integration know-how sometimes gets more than 20% extra performance out of an AutoStore system. He expects AI to break up today's monolithic systems such as warehouse management systems, with AI agents for inventory management, consolidation and reservation strategy as the next step, and over the next three to five years a lot of new automation that is more fragmented and better orchestrated by AI-driven software.

"Challenge me in two years, please."

Rogier raises a question he hears a lot in European logistics, that robotics companies coming mostly from China expect things to work as they do there and then find warehouses built 20 years ago. Jan's answer is that on a brownfield site a humanoid may be the best way in, as long as software controls and steers it and it meets CE certification, safety controls, collaborative safety rules and the new Cyber Resilience Act. By his account customers ask about capacity, technology, time and cost, and Swisslog's Chinese ownership normally does not come up. Jan describes Swisslog as the master solution integrator inside the KUKA environment.

Rogier and Lei cover: whether Jan has seen Midea's humanoids in its washing machine factory, why Swisslog is moving from loving steel to loving the process, what a humanoid can do that a fixed picking arm cannot, why he thinks two years may even be too slow, and the AI picking arm that fetches the pasta and a tin of tomatoes when you tell it you want spaghetti today.

Chapters:
00:00 Swisslog, KUKA and Midea's factory humanoids
01:41 Where humanoids fit in a Swisslog warehouse
03:42 KUKA AMP and the three software layers
05:50 Brownfield, greenfield and new EU rules
09:08 Midea ownership in customer talks
10:07 From loving steel to loving the process
12:02 Getting 20% more out of an AutoStore
13:35 AI agents and the end of the monolithic WMS
14:50 Humanoids across the whole workflow
16:32 A humanoid prototype within two years
18:07 Why two years may be too slow

Watch the video version on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mG-KyVDeJI

Follow Swisslog
Company website: https://www.swisslog.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SwisslogLogisticsAutomation

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Host Lei Li: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leilibeyondthenow/
Host Rogier Bikker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogierbikker/