Danish robot equipment company OnRobot acquires Purple Robotics

The acquisition takes place a mere two months after the OnRobot merger of three robotics companies from the United States, Hungary and Denmark that created one global player with a strong focus on the market for industrial robot accessories. With the acquisition of Purple Robotics, OnRobot can now offer a dual vacuum gripper – a world’s first. Purple Robotics was established by a Danish trio – Lasse Kieffer, Henrik Tillitz Hansen and Peter Nadolny Madsen, all of whom have a background as product developers at Universal Robots. OnRobot is now infusing this expertise into its own existing R&D department at its headquarters in Odense. Lasse Kieffer, Purple Robotics CEO, looks forward to joining the OnRobot organization together with his colleagues. “It has been really good fun to create a brand new robotics company and to disrupt the market for vacuum grippers with our invention,” Lasse Kieffer said. “It makes a lot of sense and creates significant synergy to join forces with OnRobot, which has already created a strong, global sales organization. This means that we can focus 100 percent on developing the world’s coolest robotics products. Together, we can go far.” Already three months after launching the product, 40 partners in 25 countries have concluded partnership agreements with Purple Robotics for the patented innovation. The Purple Robotics dual vacuum gripper can, so to speak, give a robot arm two “hands” and thereby the ability to handle several items simultaneously and solving multiple tasks in one movement. Additionally, it has an electric pump integrated in the gripper itself, meaning users do not need to worry about hoses, compressed air, and cables as with conventional vacuum gripper solutions. The lifting capacity is 10 kilograms (22 lbs) and the robot gripper is designed for use on a wide range of light-weight robots from all robot manufacturers. “It must be easily conceivable to automate even small production batches,” said Enrico Krog Iversen, CEO, OnRobot. “Otherwise, robot technology is not a good investment. This is why we hand pick the best and most user-friendly robot products and integrate them in OnRobot. We are extremely pleased to now be able to offer our robot partners and integrators the vacuum gripper, just as we look forward to being able to add the top-class Purple Robotics robot developers to our development department.”