Technical due diligence of Digital Robots from fruitcore robotics

In short

With their Digital Robots, fruitcore robotics wants to enable medium-sized enterprises to automate their operations. Fraunhofer IPA used its extensive expertise in robotics to qualitatively assess both the technical performance and control and communication capabilities of the HORST robot family.

In detail

For almost five decades, Fraunhofer IPA employees have been developing new robot technologies for industry and commerce and translating them into precisely tailored applications. Accordingly, their expertise concerning current market developments, technical components, research trends and strategic considerations for automation is vast. With this knowledge, Fraunhofer IPA was ideally suited to support potential strategic partners of fruitcore with an independent, rough preliminary assessment of HORST and thus provide technical guidance despite a very short project time.

Together, the project partners defined three key areas for this initial assessment. The first of these was market view. With its capabilities and price, HORST is aimed at SMEs - a customer group which Fraunhofer IPA also works closely with and whose needs for robust and easy-to-operate robots the institute knows exactly. The suitability of fruitcore’s sales and commissioning services for SMEs were also examined. The second focus of the initial assessment was on the robot’s kinematics. The robot has the usual six axes but also features some new components that are of interest to price-sensitive customers. The IPA experts examined these under technical aspects. The third key area was control technology and software. From other work such as heading the ROS-Industrial Consortium or the research project “SeRoNet”, the IPA experts have comprehensive knowledge of current developments concerning interfaces, applications and the overall trend towards platforms. Consequently, they were also in a position to assess the technical features of fruitcore's counterpart “horstCOSMOS”.

The due diligence results thus formed a good working basis for potential strategic partners and also provided fruitcore with a useful external opinion of their robot.

"Thanks to its expertise in robotics, Fraunhofer IPA helped us assess the potential of our Digital Robots and gave us valuable advice on further developing our robot family."

Patrick Heimburger, CEO and founder of fruitcore robotics