Doosan Robotics
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Doosan Robotics Inc. is a South Korean robotics company that designs and manufactures collaborative robots (cobots) for industrial, food-service, and emerging humanoid applications. Established in 2015 as a subsidiary of Doosan Corporation, the company is headquartered in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, and is one of the largest cobot vendors globally. By 2022, Doosan Robotics held the leading position in South Korea's domestic collaborative-robot market and ranked among the top five cobot suppliers worldwide, with a particularly strong position in high-payload cobots above 20 kg. The company listed on the KOSPI on October 5, 2023, in what was the largest South Korean initial public offering of that year by proceeds.
Since 2024 Doosan Robotics has been pivoting from a pure hardware vendor toward what it calls an "intelligent robot solutions" provider, integrating AI software, partner ecosystems, and a planned move into industrial humanoid robots. The company has built partnerships with Nvidia, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services to embed foundation models and natural-language interfaces into its cobot stack, and in 2025 it acquired a controlling stake in U.S. integrator ONExia to anchor a North American manufacturing and engineering base.
Doosan Robotics Inc. was incorporated on July 31, 2015, after Doosan Group selected robotics as one of its new growth engines. The parent group, Doosan Corporation, is one of South Korea's oldest chaebol and traces its origins to 1896, with major businesses in construction equipment (Doosan Bobcat), heavy machinery, energy systems (Doosan Enerbility), fuel cells, and advanced materials. Robotics gave the conglomerate a foothold in factory automation that complemented its existing exposure to manufacturing and infrastructure.
The company is headquartered in Suwon, in Gyeonggi Province south of Seoul, where it operates an industrial robot production facility with an annual capacity of around 10,000 units, an Innovation Lab, and a Prototyping Lab. In September 2025 the firm consolidated its AI and software research at a separate Doosan Robotics Innovation Center in Bundang, also in Gyeonggi.
After roughly three years of internal research and development, Doosan Robotics shipped its first cobots in 2017 and began mass production in 2018. By 2022 cumulative shipments had passed several thousand units, with North America and Europe contributing around 60 to 70 percent of revenue, an unusual export ratio for a Korean industrial-equipment vendor at that scale.
Leadership at Doosan Robotics has rotated between professional managers and members of the founding Park family that controls Doosan Group. Park In-won, a fourth-generation member of the family, was appointed CEO in December 2022 and has overseen the IPO and the AI pivot. The company has at times operated under a multi-CEO structure that pairs an operating CEO with a chief strategy officer and a chief financial officer in co-CEO roles, a common arrangement at large Korean corporations. Kevin Kim (Kim Min-pyo) led the strategy and AI-transformation messaging through 2024 and 2025, including the announcement of the company's humanoid roadmap.
Doosan Robotics organizes its cobots into letter-coded series: M for general-purpose, A for high-speed precision, H for high payload, P (PRIME) for palletizing and long reach, and E for hygiene-rated food and beverage applications. Each series spans several models that vary by reach and payload. The naming convention generally combines a series letter with a four-digit code reflecting payload and reach (for example, the M0617 carries 6 kg over a 1700 mm reach).
| Series | Representative models | Payload | Reach | Year introduced | Primary use cases |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| M-Series | M0609, M0617, M1013, M1509 | 6 to 15 kg | 900 to 1700 mm | 2017 to 2018 | General assembly, packaging, machine tending |
| A-Series | A0509, A0509S, A0912, A0912S | 5 to 9 kg | 900 to 1200 mm | 2021 | High-speed precision tasks, electronics, inspection |
| H-Series | H2017, H2515 | 20 to 25 kg | 1500 to 1700 mm | 2020 | Heavy machine tending, large-format assembly, palletizing |
| E-Series | E0509, E0509S | 5 kg | 900 mm | 2023 | Coffee, frying, dessert and food-service automation (NSF, IP66 rated) |
| P-Series (PRIME) | P3020 | 30 kg | 2030 mm | 2024 | High-stack palletizing from floor to two metres |
All Doosan cobots use proprietary six-axis precision torque sensors at every joint, which the company markets as a key differentiator for collision detection and contact-rich tasks. Repeatability is rated at around plus or minus 0.03 mm for the M-Series, plus or minus 0.05 mm for the E-Series, and plus or minus 0.1 mm for the heavier P-Series. The P3020, unveiled at Automate 2024, removes the fourth axis and increases sixth-axis speed to 360 degrees per second; Doosan states it draws roughly 25 percent less power than competing 30 kg cobots through a built-in gravity compensation mechanism. The P3020 is rated to PL e and Cat 4 functional safety.
The native programming environment is Doosan Robot Language (DRL), a Python-flavoured scripting language for motion, I/O, and force control. DRL programs run inside DART-Studio, a Windows IDE that supports both online programming on a connected robot and offline programming through plug-ins for simulators such as RoboDK. DRL Studio has also been packaged as a JetBrains IntelliJ plug-in for users who prefer a richer code editor.
The broader Dart-Suite platform, introduced at CES 2024, is an open ecosystem of reusable robot components, third-party hardware drivers, and AI modules built on top of DART-Studio. It functions analogously to Universal Robots' URCap marketplace, letting integrators publish skills and end-effector packages that any Doosan cobot can install. Dart-Suite is positioned as the foundation for Doosan's later "Intelligent Robot Solution" plug-and-play offering. Doosan also publishes ROS and ROS 2 drivers, and the cobot controllers can run as nodes within a Robot Operating System graph.
Industrial deployments dominate Doosan's revenue. Cobots are sold for pick-and-place and machine tending in metal-cutting cells, plastic injection moulding, semiconductor fab back-end packaging, and electronic assembly lines. The H-Series in particular is positioned for heavy machine tending in CNC environments, where 25 kg payload covers most chuck-load tasks. Welding cobots wrap a Doosan arm with a torch package and a wire feeder, with several integrators offering pre-engineered welding cells around the M1013 and H2017.
Palletizing has become a flagship application: the P3020 can stack up to ten layers of standard boxes from a fixed base without an external lift column, which simplifies retrofits in warehouses with limited ceiling height.
Doosan Robotics has built a recognisable presence in service robotics for cafes and restaurants, primarily in South Korea. Dr. Presso is a robot barista station combining an M-Series or E-Series cobot with an Eversys Cameo automatic espresso machine, capable of preparing 15 hot or iced drinks and operating around the clock. The unit weighs roughly 380 kg and is one of the few barista robots that can place lids on takeaway cups. Doosan supplied a Dr. Presso variant to Mega MGC Coffee, one of South Korea's largest coffee chains, in 2024. The E-Series itself was launched in April 2023 with NSF and IP66 hygiene ratings to address food-service installations directly.
The company has also publicised cobot-driven ice-cream kiosks, fried-chicken kitchens (a partnership with one of Korea's largest fried-chicken chains), and dessert robots. At CES 2024 it demonstrated Mixmaster Moodie, a cocktail bartender that uses Microsoft Azure OpenAI to map a guest's facial expression to one of 24 ChatGPT-designed drinks, paired with Bridgestone's soft "Tetote" rubber-muscle gripper. Oscar the Sorter, also shown at CES 2024, is an AI-powered recycling cobot that learns to recognise and sort items autonomously and won a CES Innovation Award in 2024.
Outside Korea, Doosan reaches end customers through a dealer and integrator network in roughly 100 countries. In the United States, Air-Oil Systems, Ellison Technologies, Mills CNC, ONExia, and Rhino Tool House have been long-running integrator partners. In Europe, distribution runs through DR Europe based in Düsseldorf, with a service centre in Heerhugowaard, Netherlands, opened in 2024.
Doosan Robotics priced its initial public offering at the top of its KRW 21,000 to 26,000 indicative range, selling 16.2 million shares at KRW 26,000 to raise approximately KRW 421.2 billion (about USD 317 million at prevailing rates). The offering attracted around KRW 33.1 trillion of retail subscription deposits, one of the largest demand pools of the year on the KOSPI. Trading began on October 5, 2023.
The stock opened at KRW 59,100, roughly 127 percent above the IPO price, and traded as high as 160 percent up intraday before closing the first session at KRW 51,400, almost double the offer price. That first-day market capitalisation of around KRW 3.33 trillion (approximately USD 2.5 billion at the time) put it inside the KOSPI top 100. The 2023 IPO was the largest in Korea that calendar year by capital raised. Subsequent share-price performance has been volatile, with the stock falling on cobot competition concerns and rising on AI- and humanoid-related announcements.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| July 31, 2015 | Doosan Robotics Inc. incorporated as a Doosan Group subsidiary |
| 2017 | First M-Series cobots shipped |
| 2018 | Mass production begins in Suwon |
| 2020 | H-Series high-payload cobots launched; Dr. Presso barista robot debuts |
| April 2023 | E-Series food and beverage cobot line launched |
| October 5, 2023 | KOSPI listing under ticker 454910 at KRW 26,000 |
| January 2024 | CES 2024 unveiling of Dart-Suite, Mixmaster Moodie, Oscar the Sorter |
| May 2024 | P-Series PRIME palletising cobot (P3020) revealed at Automate 2024 |
| July 2024 | Initial Doosan Robotics and Doosan Bobcat merger plan announced |
| December 2024 | Bobcat merger called off after share-price declines |
| April 2025 | CEO Kevin Kim announces shift to "intelligent robot solutions" |
| July 2025 | Acquires 89.59% of ONExia for around USD 25.9 million |
| September 2025 | Doosan Robotics Innovation Center opens in Bundang |
| January 1, 2026 | ONExia rebranded as Doosan Robotics Americas |
In July 2024 Doosan Group announced a controversial reorganisation that would have made Doosan Bobcat, the profitable construction-equipment division, a wholly owned subsidiary of Doosan Robotics through a stock swap. The original 1-for-0.63 ratio drew immediate criticism from Bobcat minority shareholders and Korean lawmakers, since Bobcat consistently generated profits while Doosan Robotics was loss-making with cumulative net losses around KRW 130 billion. The Financial Supervisory Service suspended the prospectus and the deal was restructured in October 2024 with a revised ratio of 1 to 0.0432962. The plan was abandoned in December 2024 after political turmoil following the short-lived martial law declaration sent Korean industrial shares lower and triggered enough buyback requests to break the deal economics.
Doosan Robotics has positioned 2024 to 2026 as a transition period from cobot hardware to a software- and AI-led product. The company calls its target category "Intelligent Robot Solution," a plug-and-play stack that bundles a cobot, perception, end-effector, and pre-trained skill software. The first commercial intelligent solutions target manufacturing automation, with later expansion planned for logistics, welding, and food-service workflows.
The Nvidia partnership is the most consequential of these alliances. The two companies are jointly developing an AI-powered robot execution platform that targets industrial humanoid robots by 2028. Their roadmap calls for an Agentic Operating System and a packaged intelligent robot solution in 2027, leading directly into a humanoid launch in 2028. Doosan plans to use Nvidia Isaac simulation tooling and the Project GR00T humanoid foundation models for training and benchmarking. An Nvidia executive visited Doosan headquarters in 2025 to formalise the expanded scope of the work, and Doosan participates in the broader Isaac early-adopter program.
Doosan and Microsoft signed a partnership giving Doosan access to Azure OpenAI Service for cobot control. The companies are building a GPT-based control layer that lets cobots accept voice commands, infer task intent from natural-language descriptions, self-correct mid-operation, and adapt actions to context. Mixmaster Moodie at CES 2024 was the first public demonstration of this stack.
The Voice to Real solution is a voice-recognition robot interface co-developed with AWS and showcased as an enhanced version of Mixmaster Moodie. Equipped with a 3D vision camera, the cobot interprets everyday language, identifies the relevant object in a workspace, and autonomously plans and executes the action. The same building blocks are positioned for industrial deployments where operators need to issue spoken work orders to a cell.
In April 2025 CEO Kevin Kim used a Doosan town hall to announce that the company would stand up dedicated AI/Software and humanoid R&D teams in the second half of 2025. The humanoid program leans heavily on Nvidia tooling rather than building its own foundation model. Doosan has not yet shipped a bipedal robot, and is positioning the program as a 2028 commercial target. The Bundang Innovation Center opened in September 2025 to house the consolidated AI, software, and humanoid teams.
In July 2025 Doosan Robotics' board approved the purchase of an 89.59 percent stake in ONExia Inc., a Pennsylvania-based system integrator founded in 1984, for around USD 25.9 million (KRW 35.6 billion). ONExia had built its own end-of-line palletising and packaging cobots on top of Doosan hardware and brought 25 years of automation project data into the parent company. The deal closed in September 2025. Doosan rebranded ONExia as Doosan Robotics Americas effective January 1, 2026, and announced a new 90,000-square-foot facility in Malvern, Pennsylvania, slated to open in spring 2026 and to host both cobot manufacturing and integration engineering.
The global cobot market remains concentrated. Universal Robots, the Danish firm acquired by Fanuc competitor Teradyne in 2015, is consistently the volume leader, with Techman Robot of Taiwan and Doosan Robotics among the larger second-tier players. Industry estimates from 2022 placed Universal Robots at roughly 30 percent share of cobot units, Techman around 5 percent, ABB around 6 percent, and Doosan Robotics around 3 percent. Doosan's share is much higher, sometimes cited above 70 percent, in the narrower segment of cobots rated for 20 kg or more, where it competes more directly with Fanuc CRX-25iA and ABB GoFa.
| Company | Country | Founded | Max payload (cobot) | Key models | Position in cobot market |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Universal Robots | Denmark | 2005 | 30 kg | UR3e, UR5e, UR10e, UR20, UR30 | Volume leader |
| Techman Robot | Taiwan | 2015 | 25 kg | TM5, TM12, TM16, TM25S | Strong second tier, Quanta-backed |
| Fanuc CRX | Japan | 2018 (CRX line) | 25 kg | CRX-5iA, CRX-10iA, CRX-25iA | Major industrial vendor entry |
| Doosan Robotics | South Korea | 2015 | 30 kg (P3020) | M, A, H, E, P series | Top in 20 kg+ payload niche |
| ABB | Switzerland and Sweden | 1988 (ABB) | 12 kg | YuMi, GoFa, SWIFTI | Industrial-grade portfolio |
| Yaskawa Electric | Japan | 1915 | 20 kg | HC10, HC20 | Hybrid industrial and cobot |
| Kuka | Germany | 1898 | 14 kg | LBR iiwa, LBR iisy | Lightweight cobot pioneer |
| AUBO Robotics | China | 2015 | 16 kg | AUBO i3, i5, i10, i16 | Low-cost challenger |
| JAKA Robotics | China | 2014 | 30 kg | JAKA Zu, Pro, MiniCobo | Fast-growing low-cost vendor |
| Franka Robotics (formerly Franka Emika) | Germany | 2016 | 3 kg | Panda, Production 3 | Research and education focus |
| Kinova | Canada | 2006 | 7 kg | Gen3, Link 6 | Research and medical assistive |
Figure AI, Tesla Optimus, Agility Robotics, and other humanoid-first companies are not direct cobot competitors today, but they share the same target customers Doosan is pursuing for its 2028 humanoid launch. Among Korean peers, Doosan Robotics, HD Hyundai Robotics, Hanwha Robotics, and Rainbow Robotics (the company behind the HUBO platform from KAIST, in which Samsung has built a stake) form the core domestic robotics cluster.
Doosan cobots have won multiple international design awards. M-Series models received Red Dot Design Awards in two consecutive years, in the Interface and User Experience category in 2017 and the Product Design category in 2018, with judges citing the touchscreen teach pendant and the polished mechanical design. The company has also collected CES Innovation Awards, including a 2022 award for a camera cobot and a 2024 honour for Oscar the Sorter.
Financially, the company has not been consistently profitable. Cumulative net losses had reached around KRW 130 billion by the time Park In-won took over as CEO, and revenue growth between 2022 and 2024 was constrained by post-IPO cobot demand softness in industrial markets and intense price competition from Chinese vendors such as JAKA and AUBO. The aborted 2024 Bobcat merger was widely interpreted as an attempt to plug Doosan Robotics's loss-making P&L into a profitable cash generator inside the same group, an arrangement that minority shareholders and Korean regulators ultimately blocked.
Long-term, the open questions for Doosan Robotics are whether the AI and software pivot generates real margin, whether the planned 2028 humanoid arrives on schedule and at credible cost, and whether the company can defend its high-payload cobot lead as Fanuc, ABB, and Chinese vendors push into the 20 to 30 kg segment. The shift toward AI in manufacturing and natural-language robot programming favours vendors that can ship integrated cobot-plus-software stacks, which is the bet behind Dart-Suite, the Nvidia partnership, and the ONExia acquisition.
Doosan Robotics is one of a small number of cobot specialists with full lifecycle ownership: in-house mechanical design, joint torque-sensor manufacturing, controller software, programming environment, and a first-party integrator arm in North America. That vertical integration, combined with its strength in high-payload cobots, makes it a useful contrast to Universal Robots' lighter-weight focus and to general-industrial robot makers such as Fanuc and ABB that approach the cobot category from above. Within South Korea, Doosan Robotics sits at the centre of a robotics cluster that also includes HD Hyundai Robotics, Hanwha Robotics, and Rainbow Robotics, and represents a sustained national bet on factory-floor automation as a successor industry to shipbuilding, semiconductors, and consumer electronics.