Kawasaki Heavy Industries
Japanese heavy-industry group whose Akashi-based robot business builds industrial, clean-room and medical robots and produced Japan's first domestically made industrial robot in 1969.
Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd. was established on 15 October 1896 and keeps head offices in both Tokyo and Kobe, according to its corporate profile. The group reported revenue of ¥2,311,267 million for the fiscal year ended 31 March 2026 and 41,652 employees at that date, and its shares trade on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market and the Nagoya Stock Exchange Premier Market under code 7012. Its robot business, run from Akashi, grew out of a 1968 licence agreement with Unimation of the United States, and the company describes the Kawasaki-Unimate it began producing in 1969 as the first industrial robot made in Japan. Today the line covers small and medium payload, spot welding, painting, palletizing, clean-room and pick-and-place robots, while Medicaroid, which Kawasaki set up in 2013, develops medical robots including the hinotori surgical system that gained CE marking in 2026. In June 2026 Kawasaki Robotics (U.S.A.) said Dexterity is scaling production of its Mech logistics robots around Kawasaki's RL030N arm, which has eight degrees of freedom.
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- Founded
- 1896
- Country
- Japan
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