ATRO has been honored with the Innovation Award 2026. Beckhoff’s modular industrial robot system impressed the jury with its free scalability, internal media feed, and complete integration into PC-based control technology. Users get a highly flexible robot solution that can be adapted precisely to the task at hand and drastically reduces engineering costs.

Presented for the first time this year, the Innovation Award recognizes outstanding technological developments in robotics. The submissions were evaluated by an independent jury of experts from research and industry, who paid particular attention to the direct user benefits and innovative strength of the solutions. Product Manager Uwe Bonin accepted the award from Frauke Itzerott, Editor-in-Chief of the trade magazine Robotik und Produktion, at the all about automation trade fair in Friedrichshafen, Germany. “The award confirms that we have taken the right path with ATRO,” says Uwe Bonin, assessing the success.

The Innovation Award underlines Beckhoff’s commitment to redefining machine-integrated robotics and dismantling established system boundaries.

The ATRO (Automation Technology for Robotics) industrial robot system eliminates overdimensioning of robot solutions: Users get customized kinematics for their specific tasks – from compact four-axis palletizers to highly complex multi-arm applications. The modularity of the system reduces inventories and enables components to be reused. The complete internal routing of all media – power, data, and fluids –
prevents interfering contours and enables endless rotation of all axes.

The decisive efficiency gain manifests itself at control level. Traditionally, up to 80 percent of programming effort in robotics is spent on coordination between robot controllers, PLCs, and vision and safety systems. ATRO is different: Consistent integration in TwinCAT and EtherCAT transforms the robot kinematics into a regular part that merges into the machine. Every configured system automatically detects the installed modules and is immediately ready for use without protracted parameterization. With ATRO, Beckhoff is offering machine and system engineering a future-proof ecosystem that combines maximum power density with minimum engineering effort and paves the way for entirely new machine concepts.

Beckhoff