The last decade has witnessed a quiet but powerful transformation inside factories, warehouses, and logistics centers. As global supply chains strained under the weight of labor shortages, rising costs, and pandemic-era disruptions, a new category of intelligent machines emerged to fill the gaps—Autonomous Mobile Robots, or AMRs. Among the leaders of this revolution stands Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR), a Danish company that has grown from a startup to a global force in just ten years.
MiR’s journey reflects the broader evolution of industrial automation: from experimental pilots to large-scale, mission-critical deployments. Today, more than 9,000 MiR robots operate around the world, seamlessly moving materials across production floors and warehouses. Their story is not just one of technological advancement, but of changing mindsets—how companies, engineers, and workers are learning to trust and collaborate with autonomous systems.
This article explores MiR’s trajectory, the innovations driving its success, the role of data in shaping future AMRs, and the cultural transformation underway in modern manufacturing environments.
From Startup Vision to Global Deployment
When MiR launched a decade ago, autonomous mobile robots were still largely experimental. Early adopters treated them as curiosities—useful for demonstrations, less so for day-to-day industrial use. But through steady product refinement, strategic partnerships, and a relentless focus on reliability, MiR has evolved into a global provider of fleet-scale automation solutions.
Over the past ten years, MiR’s robots have been deployed in diverse environments ranging from automotive and electronics factories to pharmaceuticals and consumer goods warehouses. Some clients now manage fleets exceeding 400 units distributed across multiple sites worldwide. This scale illustrates a significant shift in perception: AMRs are no longer proofs of concept but essential contributors to logistics efficiency.
MiR’s acquisition by Teradyne, a leading supplier of semiconductor test equipment, further strengthened its operational discipline. The merger brought a rigorous manufacturing ethos to MiR’s product line, ensuring that quality became central to every stage of production. The focus shifted from agility alone to durability, reliability, and lifecycle performance—qualities necessary for industrial acceptance.
Quality, Payload, and Platform Evolution
The integration with Teradyne marked a turning point in MiR’s technical and organizational maturity. The company’s product portfolio now spans three primary payload categories, with robots capable of handling between 250 and 1,350 kilograms. Yet, MiR’s ambitions extend much higher. The company is developing heavy-duty systems comparable to pallet jacks and forklifts, closing the gap between autonomous trolleys and full-scale automated logistics vehicles.
The acquisition of AutoGuide Mobile Robots in 2022 was pivotal in this direction. AutoGuide’s technology, which specialized in high-payload transport systems, has since been rebranded under the MiR identity. The integration enables MiR to offer a unified software platform across both light and heavy payload robots, simplifying fleet coordination and reducing complexity for end users.
Beyond payload capacity, MiR has focused on improving core system components such as navigation accuracy, battery life, and safety mechanisms. While early AMRs relied heavily on fixed markers or structured paths, MiR’s latest generations employ advanced sensor fusion—combining lidar, cameras, and SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping)—to adapt to dynamic environments. This adaptability has been crucial in moving from pilot applications to production-critical logistics.
The Power of Data: Turning Fleets into Intelligent Systems
The digital layer of MiR’s innovation is perhaps its most transformative. As customers expanded their fleets, managing dozens or even hundreds of autonomous robots became a new challenge. MiR’s answer is MiR Insights, a cloud-based analytics and fleet management platform that captures operational data across all deployed robots.
MiR Insights goes beyond real-time traffic control. It provides actionable intelligence on route optimization, mission efficiency, and robot utilization rates. By analyzing patterns in robot movement and idle time, facilities can redesign workflows, adjust layouts, and reduce bottlenecks. Over time, these insights contribute to measurable gains in throughput and productivity.
Crucially, MiR is now beginning to harness anonymized customer data to drive product development. By aggregating performance information from multiple sites and industries, the company can identify systemic issues, optimize predictive maintenance algorithms, and refine hardware design. This represents a strategic evolution—from simply deploying robots to learning continuously from their behavior in the field.
The vision is to enable self-optimizing logistics, where AMRs not only execute missions but also suggest improvements. As machine learning models mature, future MiR robots may autonomously adapt their parameters to changing workloads, floor layouts, or environmental conditions.
The Role of Fleet Management in Large-Scale Deployments
As the number of AMRs per facility grows, fleet management has become the backbone of autonomous operations. MiR’s fleet management software allows dozens of robots to coordinate their tasks, avoid collisions, and dynamically reroute when obstacles appear. This orchestration is vital in ensuring that robots “dance” harmoniously rather than compete for space.
For customers, centralized management translates to consistency and scalability. Facilities can deploy standardized workflows across multiple sites, monitor system health remotely, and roll out software updates seamlessly. The fleet manager’s architecture also lays the foundation for future interoperability, where robots from different MiR product lines—or even different manufacturers—can coexist under one digital umbrella.
The company’s emphasis on a single software ecosystem ensures that new heavy-payload models will integrate smoothly with existing fleets. This interoperability reduces learning curves and preserves the customer’s investment in training, configuration, and data integration.
Automation as a Response to the Labor Crisis
While technology continues to advance, the human dimension remains at the heart of automation’s appeal. Global industries face a persistent shortage of labor, particularly in repetitive and physically demanding roles. AMRs provide a pragmatic response—taking over tasks like material transport, which traditionally require workers to push or pull heavy carts over long distances.
By automating these non-value-added movements, companies can redeploy their human workforce toward more skilled and engaging responsibilities. The goal is not replacement but augmentation—creating workplaces where people oversee, manage, and improve automated processes rather than perform monotonous tasks.
This shift also helps companies pursue “lights-out” or near-lights-out operations, where production continues 24/7 with minimal human supervision. Robots do not require rest, shift changes, or overtime pay. Their continuous availability improves throughput and resilience, especially in industries where downtime is costly.
Cultural Acceptance: From Resistance to Collaboration
One of the less-discussed challenges in deploying robotics is cultural adoption. Employees initially wary of automation often perceive robots as threats to job security. MiR’s experience reveals a different outcome: when robots prove their usefulness, they are embraced—not feared.
In many factories, workers have started naming their robots, treating them as teammates rather than machines. These gestures of familiarity mark a psychological shift in workplace culture. Once the robots are seen as partners that lighten the workload, acceptance deepens and operational efficiency improves.
Interestingly, early resistance often turns into enthusiasm. Facilities that struggled through complex deployments now report strong employee buy-in. The presence of AMRs becomes a point of pride, reflecting an organization’s modernity and commitment to technology-driven improvement. This cultural acceptance may eventually influence recruitment, as younger workers express preferences for technologically advanced workplaces.
Continuous Improvement and the Teradyne Advantage
The Teradyne acquisition not only improved MiR’s product quality but also institutionalized a culture of measurement and accountability. The company now tracks key performance indicators such as uptime, out-of-the-box success rates, and manufacturing efficiency. These metrics drive internal reviews and continuous improvement cycles, ensuring that each new generation of robots performs better than the last.
Teradyne’s global engineering expertise has also enhanced MiR’s ability to serve large enterprise customers. By integrating robust quality management processes, MiR has transitioned from a nimble innovator to a reliable industrial partner. This transformation is crucial as AMRs move deeper into mission-critical logistics, where reliability is non-negotiable.
In parallel, MiR continues to refine its internal processes—sales, marketing, and technical support—aligning them with enterprise standards. This operational maturity positions the company for sustained global expansion, supported by Teradyne’s extensive customer network and engineering resources.
A Decade of Learning and a Platform for the Future
Reaching its ten-year milestone, MiR stands as one of the most experienced players in the autonomous mobile robotics sector. The company’s longevity in such a fast-moving field provides a unique advantage: accumulated lessons from thousands of deployments. Every challenge—from software integration to environmental calibration—has helped MiR refine its approach and shorten implementation times for new clients.
That decade of experience translates into faster onboarding and better scalability. Customers can now expect smoother transitions from pilot projects to full production fleets. With standardized processes, preconfigured workflows, and proven best practices, MiR’s implementation timelines have steadily decreased, reducing both risk and total cost of ownership.
The company’s growing trust capital also plays a key role. As more enterprises witness successful deployments, confidence in AMR technology spreads. MiR’s brand, now synonymous with reliability and scalability, continues to strengthen in an increasingly competitive market.
Toward an Integrated Robotics Ecosystem
Looking ahead, MiR is exploring deeper integration between mobile platforms and robotic arms. The company has already showcased prototypes where third-party collaborative arms are mounted on MiR bases, enabling mobile manipulation tasks such as automated pick-and-place or machine tending.
These mobile cobot systems represent the next frontier of factory automation: flexible, reconfigurable cells that move to where they are needed rather than requiring fixed infrastructure. Such versatility could redefine production layouts, allowing manufacturers to scale or retool with minimal disruption.
MiR’s collaboration with Universal Robots, another Teradyne-owned company, provides a natural synergy for developing these solutions. Together, they form the nucleus of Teradyne Robotics, a division dedicated to advancing human-robot collaboration across industries. This alignment positions MiR to expand beyond logistics into broader domains of industrial automation.
Conclusion: Automation with Purpose
The story of Mobile Industrial Robots is one of evolution—from an ambitious startup in Denmark to a cornerstone of Teradyne’s global robotics portfolio. In just ten years, MiR has reshaped how factories think about mobility, data, and workforce transformation. Its robots embody the new face of industrial automation: safe, intelligent, collaborative, and deeply integrated into the digital fabric of manufacturing.
As industries continue to navigate labor shortages and increasing demand for efficiency, AMRs like those from MiR will become not just helpful, but essential. The future factory will likely operate as a hybrid ecosystem of people and robots—each complementing the other’s strengths.
And in that future, MiR’s vision of reliable, data-driven, and human-centered automation will continue to lead the way.
