Danish robotics startup enters the industrial truck market already crowned a winner | RoboticsTomorrow

A young Danish robotics company has won one of intralogistics’ most prestigious international awards, placing its debut self-driving pallet jack alongside products from the industry’s largest players. The Mobile Robot Company received the IFOY AWARD 2026 in the category Industrial Truck of the Year for its J1600 self-driving pallet jack, a vehicle designed to keep human operators in control while automating repetitive transport tasks.

Award Recognition

The IFOY (International Intralogistics and Forklift Truck of the Year) award is widely respected in the material handling sector. For the 2026 competition, 49 products were entered; only 17 reached the finals. Each finalist underwent the multi-stage IFOY Audit, which includes a scientific Innovation Check, the IFOY Test, and evaluation by an independent international jury of trade journalists. Products are assessed against comparable solutions already on the market rather than against each other.

The Mobile Robot Company’s J1600 beat out established competition including Crown and STILL, part of KION Group—both long-standing global players in forklift and warehouse equipment. The jury recognized the vehicle for making automation more accessible and practical, particularly for companies that lack the budget, time, or internal resources for large-scale automation projects.

Bridging the Automation Gap

Warehouse automation has often been presented as a binary choice between manual work and full automation. The J1600 aims to fill the large space in between. As Emil Hauch Jensen, CEO and co-founder of The Mobile Robot Company, explained: “We believe there is a large space in between, where robots can support the operator instead of replacing them. That is the space we built the J1600 for.”

The vehicle can be operated like a standard electric pallet jack, but also navigates autonomously using 3D LiDAR SLAM supported by an industrial NVIDIA Jetson AI computer. The operator picks up a pallet, chooses a destination on the touchscreen, and sends the pallet jack on an autonomous delivery run. The robot can then return, park, or continue to another saved location. This human-in-the-loop approach leaves judgment-based decisions—handling difficult loads, adapting to changing layouts, and dealing with exceptions—with the operator, while automating the walking and transport that consume time and energy.

Product Features and Ease of Use

The J1600 can carry up to 1,600 kg, lift up to 1.6 m, and drive at up to 5.4 km/h. According to the IFOY jury evaluation, it can reduce manual work by up to 80 percent on repetitive transport tasks. A central design principle is ease of use: the J1600 works out of the box without mandatory Wi-Fi, extensive IT setup, or system integration. Operators can be trained in about 30 minutes. New destinations are added simply by manually driving the pallet jack to a location and pressing “Save Location” on the touchscreen.

Safety is handled through a layered architecture that includes 3D LiDAR mapping, two 2D safety LiDARs, emergency stop functions, certified components, speed-dependent safety zones, and a 360-degree safety field. The J1600 is CE marked and designed to meet EU and US safety standards, including ISO 3691-4 and ANSI/ITSDF B56.5. The product also supports VDA 5050 and API integration for larger fleet or automation systems, but integration is not required for basic use.

Market Impact and Availability

Founded in November 2024, The Mobile Robot Company launched its first product in January 2026. Winning the IFOY Industrial Truck of the Year award at such an early stage underscores a broader shift in warehouse automation. The company targets a large portion of the market that has not yet adopted automation: smaller manufacturers, warehouses, third-party logistics providers, grocery and FMCG distribution sites, and larger facilities with many local material flows that are too small or changeable for conventional automation projects.

The company has already established distributor partnerships in eight countries and says additional partners are being added as it prepares for international sales. The IFOY award provides independent validation at an early stage, but for the wider industry, the win highlights an important question: whether the next wave of warehouse automation will be driven not only by more advanced robotics, but by machines simple enough for ordinary warehouse teams to use without changing the way they work.

The source for this article is https://www.roboticstomorrow.com/news/2026/06/29/danish-robotics-startup-enters-the-industrial-truck-market-already-crowned-a-winner/26784/.