United Robotics Group acquires SoftBank Robotics Europe

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The Pepper humanoid service robotic was designed to encourage belief. Supply: SoftBank

United Robotics Group, a German distributor of service robots, is buying Softbank Robotics Europe. Monetary particulars of the acquisition weren’t disclosed. Softbank Robotics Europe, which develops the Pepper and Nao robots, will revert to its authentic title, Aldebaran, which it used previous to being acquired by Softbank.

SoftBank will purchase a minority stake in United Robotics Group. The 2 corporations will proceed to cooperate in advertising robots. The transaction is topic to merger clearance and is predicted to shut within the second quarter of 2022. This deal was first reported to be within the works again in October 2021.

United has been the grasp distributor of Nao and Pepper in Europe since October 2021, answerable for gross sales, service and upkeep. It additionally distributes the Pudu service robotic, Boston Dynamics’ Spot quadruped, the Sawyer collaborative robotic arm and different robots. United is backed by Hahn, a significant industrial automation participant in Germany. Hahn acquired the IP for Rethink Robotics after the corporate shut down in 2018. Hahn has since relaunched Sawyer.

“We’re happy to welcome SBRE with greater than 180 exceptionally motivated robotics specialists,” mentioned Thomas Hähn, founder and CEO of United Robotics Group. “This is a vital step for us on the best way to additional internationalizing our firm. The longer term Aldebaran with their sturdy repute out there will assist us to additional develop our nice potential in combining interplay robotics with our information in collaborative industrial robotics.”

Fumihide Tomizawa, President & CEO, SoftBank Robotics Group, mentioned: “We’re strengthening our strategic partnerships with numerous robotics chief corporations world wide. We’re more than happy to kind a powerful partnership with a profitable firm, URG. We are going to leverage this nice relationship to develop and market Pepper and quite a lot of different robots.”

It’s been a rocky few years for Softbank Robotics Europe and the Pepper humanoid. Reuters reported in June 2021 that Softbank stopped manufacturing of Pepper in 2020 and has fewer than 2,000 models left. In response to Reuters, SoftBank deliberate to finish gross sales of latest Pepper models in 2023 on the newest. Gross sales of refurbished models will proceed after this level, Reuters reported.

United Robotics Group distributes (left to proper) Pepper, Sawyer, Double 3, Nao and Temi. It additionally distributes Boston Dynamics’ Spot.

It’s unclear in the intervening time if United Robotics Group and Aldebaran will restart manufacturing of latest Pepper models. The Robotic Report reached out to the businesses and can replace this story if new particulars emerge.

Pepper has been a money-losing proposition because it was launched. Softbank Robotics Europe, which was acquired by Softbank for $100 million in 2012, misplaced $38 million in its fiscal 2019-2020 12 months and greater than $119 million during the last three years.

In June 2021, Softbank Robotics Europe laid off 40% of its workers in Paris. An worker, who wished to stay nameless, instructed The Robotic Report on the time that “the marketplace for Nao and Pepper is smaller than we anticipated.” The supply additionally mentioned Softbank wouldn’t be specializing in the Nao and Pepper robots a lot going ahead.

It’s been clear for some time that each Nao and Pepper weren’t going to be a significant a part of Softbank’s robotics technique going ahead. In January 2021, for instance, it was introduced that Softbank Robotics will collectively develop robots with Japanese electronics maker Iris Ohyama. The three way partnership, known as Iris Robotics, by no means mentions Nao or Pepper.

The Whiz cleansing robotic is Softbank’s new flagship robotic, in line with a supply. Softbank has made different adjustments to its robotics technique, most notably offloading 80% of its possession stake in Boston Dynamics to Hyundai for $880 million. It additionally paid $2.8 billion for a 40% possession stake in AutoStore, a number one developer of automated storage and retrieval programs (AS/RS), that debuted earlier this week on the Oslo Inventory Alternate. AutoStore at present has a world blue-chip buyer base with greater than 600 installations and 20,000 robots throughout 35 nations.