Renault Group has just announced a minority stake in WADERCRAFTFrench specialist in robotic exoskeletons with autonomous assistance. This operation is accompanied by a strategic partnership intended to develop robots for the production sites of the automaker. A collaboration that marks the transition from a technology designed for hospitals to a new generation of industrial tools.
TL; DR – When medical robotics enter the factory
👥 For whom is it important?
- Industrial managers looking for ergonomic automation
- Deeptech and Corporate Venture investors
- Robotic startups targeting the B2B market
- Public decision -makers involved in technological sovereignty
💡 Why is it strategic?
- Renault industrializes an initially medical technology
- WANDERCRAFT accesses large -scale production
- Calvin, new mobile robot, relieves factory operators
- Differentiating positioning in front of Chinese and American robotics
- First European case of clinical transfer to heavy industry
🔧 What it changes concretely
- Reduction of painful tasks on assembly lines
- Acceleration of design-to-cost for collaborative robots
- Creation of a range of industrial robots based on human walking
- Renault strengthens its IA + robotics strategy in its factories
- Wandercraft is expanding its market beyond the medical sector
Founded in 2012, Wandercraft first made itself known by its exoskeletons for medical use, deployed in rehabilitation centers in the United States, Europe and Asia. Its Atalante model, self-balanced and capable of reproducing a human march without crutches, has been used to accompany paraplegic people or with severe motor disorders.
With this partnership, Wandercraft engages in a completely different field. The technology initially developed to restore movement to patients is now moving into Renault mounting chains. The objective is to develop a family of mobile robots called Calvincapable of relieving operators from painful, repetitive or unwelcome tasks. These robots are designed to intervene in complex industrial environments, where flexibility and man-machine collaboration are decisive.
For Renault, it is less an integral automation than a strategic hybridization between advanced technology and human work. The manufacturer highlights a logic of “design-to-cost” and controlled industrialization, based on its know-how in mass production. “” This partnership with Wandercraft is turned to the future. It will allow us to accelerate automation and develop robots suitable for our specific industrial automobile uses, allowing us to dedicate our teams to higher added value activities and relieve operators from painful and unregonomic tasks. It will stimulate productivity thanks to the accelerated reduction in time and production costs “, Specifies Thierry Charvet, industrial director and quality of the Renault group.
For its part, Wandercraft sees this collaboration the opportunity to cross an industrial threshold that is difficult to reach alone. Its director general and co-founder, Matthieu Masselin, underlines the importance of this partnership to expand the scope of its robots beyond the medical: “ This partnership will strengthen our ability to build and put high -impact and low cost robots on the scale that improve the daily life of people – whether it is to help people with disabilities to walk or support industry workers through automation – at the factory, in clinics and at home. »»
The first industrial prototype resulting from this collaboration, Calvin 40was developed in forty days. It inaugurates a series of mobile humanoid robots intended to adapt to the constraints of modern production lines. Renault’s announcement is part of a broader trend in exploring collaborative robotics within the automotive industry, already visible at Tesla, Hyundai or BMW. But where others bet on 100 % robotic approaches, Renault favors a model where the machine supports the human gesture without supplant it.
The Renault-Wandercraft partnership is thus part of a global dynamic of boom in mobile humanoid robotics, at the crossroads of the collaborative robot and the intelligent exoskeleton. In the United States, Apptronik developed Apolloa robot designed to work in warehouses. AGILITY ROBOTICSsupported by Amazon, offers Digita biped capable of manipulating objects in factories. In Canada, Sanctuary Ai put on Phoenixa humanoid platform with cognitive AI to perform various tasks in semi-structured environments.
In China, robotics is the subject of explicit strategic support of the State, as part of the plan “Made in China 2025” Who aims to make the country a world leader in high -tech industries, including intelligent robotics. Faced with rapid aging of the active population and tensions on manufacturing productivity, Beijing pushes companies to automate on a large scale. The Chinese industrial robotics market is now the largest in the world in volume, but a new generation of players seeks to exceed the simple welding or logistics robot. Companies like Uniter Develop quadruped, humanoid or exoskeletal robots, integrating more and more on -board AI capacities, perception and autonomous movement.
In Europe, advances are more fragmented. German German Bionic propose Cray Xa connected exoskeleton to relieve back workers. In Spain, Gogoa Mobility Robots Also develops exoskeletons with therapeutic or professional aim. But Wandercraft retains a separate position with its self-balanced technology, its mastery of key components and a owner neural network trained on biomechanical data from reality. This technical base could constitute a major competitive lever in industrialization.
The entry of the automotive sector into assistance robotics from the medical and thus overturns the usual innovation circuits. While industrial technologies traditionally irrigate medicine, the partnership between Renault and Wandercraft shows that the reverse is now possible. In a context where physical and ergonomic constraints weigh on the performance of production sites, exoskeleton becomes a productivity tool. And rehabilitation robots are preparing to walk in factories.
