I was very excited to hear that KUKA was just a street car ride away, headquartered right in Augsburg itself. The building was very nice and just by the way the inside looked, I knew that this day would give me a “futuristic vibe.” The room where the presentation was held had an AI talking wall, robots, and some other models for show. I really enjoyed this presentation and the format in which it was held. I found myself very engaged and eager to hear more, especially seeing the AI in the wall screen at the start. KUKA has developed an AI that has the capabilities of most AI bots, it was fun to see the wall screen talk to us, but also it gave me the impression of the rate at which this company has the capabilities to grow in automated devices. We then saw the robot performance which was my favorite part of the presentation. There was a big screen in the back and two robots in front of it, each holding two smaller screens. Using AI, video work, and the robotic functions, they were able to bring this to life. The person in the dance videos would hop from the big screen to the small robotic screen as the robots moved around. This was very eye opening as I got to see robots in a space I did not expect. After we got to see a simulation of the factory which was a good intro to what we would be seeing in real life an hour later. 

In a later portion of the presentation we got to hear specifics about the robots. I always heard so much about robotic work in factories, but finally got to hear the details of how these robots are made. KUKA sources their products from Germany and outside the US in order to produce their robots. They have set designs that companies can order, that also can be customized for a higher price. A burning question I had was whether the robots were built by robots or people. The answer is: both. Small parts of the robots can be built by other robots, but the majority of them are built and engineered by humans. An order of robots can take anywhere from 4- 25 weeks depending on the order size, products, and shipment. The robots are pre-programmed to the purchasing company’s needs and installed by KUKA engineers. KUKA is also an OEM because it manufactures complete products under its own brand, it’s not a tier 1 supplier because those usually supply components or subsystems rather than a finished branded product. It was very insightful to hear from the colleague who worked on the Tesla account, he talked about the pressure of hitting deadlines, specifically for tesla and specifically how crucial the robots are for the production of automobiles, they front many favorites and are the reason why companies can produce so many.

KUKA gets a bonus point because before the factory tour we got a coffee, I felt very professional using my visitors pass to get it. The KUKA factory was smaller than the BMW one we saw yesterday. Almost the whole factory was interconnected and we got to see almost the whole thing. The main room is where the robots are manufactured, some robots were manufacturing small subparts, while many humans were on the floor doing most of the engineering creating the larger robotic structure and painting them. Afterwards, we saw the test room and got to see them work which was my favorite part.