He is an entrepreneur, manager and above all a designer, responsible for groundbreaking projects in the field of robotics. Among others, together with Esben Østergaard and Kasper Støy, he founded and developed Universal Robots, then at SoftBank Robotics he led the project to build the humanoid “Romeo,” and in 2014 he began construction work on his own series of collaborative robots, Kassow Robots.
Denmark, 2005 – Kristian Kassow, along with Esben Østergaard and Kasper Støy, founds a startup that will become a market leader a dozen years later. Universal Robots is also a pioneer in the field of cobotics. There, Kassow is responsible for, among other things, the mechanical development of the arm and leads a team of programmers. After four years on the job, he parted ways with the company because he did not identify with the development vision of then-CEO Enrico Krog Iversen (now CEO of On Robot). Until UR was bought out for $285 million by the Teradyne Corporation in 2015, Kassow is a shareholder in UR. After Universal, Kassow leads engineering teams and manages product development for NKT Flexibles in the oil industry. Then, at SoftBank Robotics, he manages the large humanoid “Romeo” project.
Denmark, 2014 – A designer decides to return to his roots. Together with two partners, he sets up Kassow Robots and starts working on industrial collaborative robots. When asked why he is returning, he says: “I never lost my passion for robotics and working in a startup climate (…) A lot of the new [cobots] look very similar to each other, and I think we are introducing something new, though. We have done more technical development to be able to bring something more to the market. [The market] is becoming more and more competitive, so of course we have to work hard.” The owners have been financing the startup on their own since the beginning.
Munich, June 2018 – Kassow Robots’ industrial collaborative robots are making their premiere at Automatica. Within the first year of entering the market, they can be purchased in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Switzerland. Several months later, also in the US, Israel and Central and Eastern Europe. As of fall 2019, Kassow Robots cobots are also available in Poland – through beboq robotics.
In his new business, Kristian Kassow focuses on strength, speed and ease of use. He produces exclusively 7-axis cobots with powerful drives. He is targeting the product mainly at small and medium-sized enterprises.
For more on how the 7th axis improves productivity, see this text.
Source: Kassow Robots, LinkedIn, The Robot Report magazine.
