Schiedam has gained a new position on Europe’s robotics map. The Humanoid Application Center (HAC) has opened at the heart of the MICS campus, the future mechatronics cluster for the Rotterdam-The Hague region. Rather than building humanoid robots or developing their underlying software, the centre focuses entirely on identifying practical ways in which companies can use humanoids.
Rocking Robots attended the opening, spoke with the three founders — Richard Kuijpers, Evert Jaap Lugt and Bart van der Werf — and joined the official programme, which included public-sector representatives, partner companies and a robot receiving the key to the city.
According to the founders, the initiative addresses a problem that has become increasingly familiar within the sector. Companies buy a humanoid robot, expect it to be ready for immediate use “out of the box”, and then discover that this is not how the technology works. A humanoid needs to be trained and requires specialised expertise and engineering capacity that most companies do not have in-house. The result, co-founder Richard Kuijpers says, is predictable: after some time, the robot ends up in a cupboard.
The Humanoid Application Center was established to close that gap. Companies do not need to purchase their own hardware or recruit new staff. The HAC provides the engineers, hardware and expertise, and works with a company to determine whether a specific use case is feasible. Once an application has been demonstrated successfully, the company can begin scaling it and deploying the robot in its own environment, whether that is a factory, healthcare facility or construction site.
‘Not the hardware, not the software, but the application’
One message was repeated throughout the opening and the interviews: Europe is unlikely to win the race in humanoid hardware, which is dominated by China, or in the underlying AI models and chips, where the United States leads. The founders believe Europe can still establish an advantage in applications: understanding which tasks humanoids can already perform, how robots can work alongside people and existing machines, and how business processes need to be adapted.
Bart van der Werf, who is responsible for use cases and operations at the HAC, explains that the objective is not necessarily to find one major task that a robot can take over completely. A fixed machine is often more efficient for performing a single repetitive process. The value of a humanoid lies instead in its versatility: its ability to carry out a collection of smaller, changing activities that together complete a task.
At a paving company, for example, a specialised machine may be able to lay a long row of paving stones efficiently, but work around edges and corners still needs to be completed manually. These are precisely the areas where a humanoid could be used.
From paving stones to peppers: the first use cases
Several partners have already joined the centre, each bringing a practical question. Construction company Dura Vermeer is investigating whether a humanoid can lay paving stones, particularly the more complex finishing work around corners and edges that existing machinery cannot handle. Cleaning company Gom is examining whether humanoids can clean surfaces ranging from floors to tables. Harvest House is exploring whether a humanoid can pick peppers in a greenhouse, while coffee capsule manufacturer Euro Caps is testing whether a robot can pack boxes alongside a production line.
Discussions are also under way about applications such as overnight security patrols and pressure-washing boats. According to Kuijpers, the list of potential use cases is essentially endless. “Anything we can do, from walking the dog to shopping for groceries, could in theory be done by a humanoid,” he says.
However, he stresses that it is important to begin with cases that can produce results quickly. The centre deliberately selects applications that can be shown to work within a few months, rather than projects requiring years of programming. Early and visible successes can help build support for the technology within an organisation.
The limitations of current hardware are also openly acknowledged. Many robots are not yet waterproof, for example, which means they cannot currently work outdoors in the rain. The HAC does not regard this as a reason to wait. Instead, it sees an opportunity to begin collecting the operational and behavioural data that will be needed once the hardware becomes resistant to rain and severe weather.
When will the centre be considered a success?
Asked what would make the Humanoid Application Center a success, all three founders point to the same objective: not one striking demonstration, but broad coverage across the economy.
Kuijpers wants partners from sectors including healthcare, construction, industry and logistics, each providing evidence that a particular application works. Once one organisation in a sector demonstrates a successful application, he expects other companies in the same industry to follow.
Evert Jaap Lugt describes the ambition as building a European movement. He wants to create a counterweight to China’s dominance in hardware and the United States’ position in chips and software by developing a European supply chain for components such as magnets, batteries and other parts.
Van der Werf defines success more concretely. For him, the objective will have been achieved if humanoids are operating at scale and are fully integrated into companies across the region within several years, including the healthcare organisations, construction companies and greenhouses that are now among the first participants.
A realistic view amid the hype
All three founders are keen to qualify the image of humanoids created by viral videos showing robots dancing or performing somersaults. Such demonstrations often involve months of pre-programmed choreography and the work of dozens or even hundreds of engineers.
The main challenge is no longer physical movement, which has developed considerably, but “intelligence”: the ability to make autonomous decisions in an unpredictable business environment.
A task such as cleaning may sound straightforward, but it immediately raises practical questions. What counts as clean? What can be thrown away? What appears to be waste but may be a raw material used by somebody else? A robot must be able to answer these questions before it can operate independently.
According to the founders, people outside the sector often underestimate this gap between visible physical capabilities and the underlying ability to make decisions. Developing autonomy that is reliable and usable in practice requires far more computing power and training than reproducing a choreographed dance.
They express similar reservations about expectations surrounding Tesla’s Optimus robot and statements by Elon Musk, who has described humanoids as potentially becoming “the most critical infrastructure ever” and expects around one billion robots to be operating worldwide within fifteen to twenty years.
The founders recognise the long-term potential, but emphasise that progressing from one functioning robot to ten, one hundred or one thousand robots is a difficult and lengthy process. One reason is the absence of large, shared training datasets comparable to those available for language models.
The importance of sharing data among participating companies was a recurring theme during both the interviews and the afternoon programme. Language models benefited from enormous quantities of text available online, but no similarly broad and shared dataset exists for robot behaviour.
The HAC therefore wants to prevent every partner from developing the same knowledge independently. Instead, knowledge and data collected through projects should be shared among the participating companies wherever this does not involve competitively sensitive information. This would allow the entire group to learn more quickly.
The opening: a regional breakthrough
The official opening was hosted by Doekle Terpstra, who is involved as a governance adviser in the broader development of the MICS campus. The 42-hectare site in Schiedam is intended to develop into an integrated regional innovation campus over the coming years.
Terpstra explained how the initiative, supported by the Rotterdam The Hague Metropolitan Area, or MRDH, has gathered momentum in a short period. At the beginning of this year, around thirty regional partners signed an administrative agreement supporting the development.
In addition to the three founders, several companies that have already joined the HAC spoke during the programme.
Representatives from the construction and infrastructure sector pointed to the combination of an ageing population, persistent labour shortages, declining productivity and a substantial housebuilding and renovation challenge of around 70,000 homes a year as reasons to begin experimenting seriously with humanoid robots.
A cleaning company described the physically demanding and repetitive nature of cleaning work. It primarily sees humanoids as a way to support employees rather than replace them, with particular attention to helping people remain healthy enough to continue working until retirement age.
The programme also provided a practical illustration of the current state of the technology. A pilot robot at one of the partner companies had temporarily stopped operating because of a malfunction. The partners described the incident as a shared learning opportunity rather than a setback.
The presence of the MRDH and Schiedam alderman Cemil Kahramanoğlu, whose portfolio includes education and SchieDistrict, gave the opening additional administrative significance.
Kahramanoğlu emphasised that while the initiative is based in Schiedam, it has regional and potentially national relevance. Although the “S” in MICS stands for Schiedam, the initiative is supported across the metropolitan region, including by the mayors of Rotterdam and The Hague.
Property developer SDK Vastgoed, a founding partner of the HAC, also underlined the ambition behind the project. The campus is intended to become an ecosystem in which companies, education and government are located close together, within a region where more than three million people live within a thirty-minute travelling distance.
The MRDH also placed the project in a geopolitical context. According to the organisation, recent developments, including the role of drone technology in the war in Ukraine, have demonstrated the importance of mechatronics and robotics to the strategic autonomy and resilience of the Netherlands and Europe.
In this context, the Humanoid Application Center is presented as one of the first concrete steps towards addressing Europe’s position in these technologies.
Figures reflecting the scale of the ambition
During a short press briefing, speakers also referred to estimates for the global humanoid robotics market. According to figures presented at the event, almost $50 billion is already being invested in the sector each year.
Morgan Stanley has estimated that the humanoid industry could develop into a market worth between $6 trillion and $9 trillion within twenty to twenty-five years, approximately one and a half times the size of today’s automotive industry.
Of the estimated 500,000 companies worldwide that are active in the humanoid supply chain, most hardware production is concentrated in China, while major US technology companies are primarily investing in software and underlying AI models.
The Schiedam centre is positioning itself in the space between hardware and software: as a European, practice-oriented centre of expertise for the application and adoption of humanoid robots.
Why Schiedam?
Asked why Schiedam was selected as the location, those involved identify two main reasons.
The first is its position at the centre of one of the Netherlands’ largest industrial clusters. The Port of Rotterdam, the petrochemical industry around the Botlek area and the internationally significant greenhouse horticulture clusters of Westland and Oostland are all nearby. The region also includes knowledge institutions such as Delft University of Technology and Erasmus University Rotterdam.
The second reason is that the municipality of Schiedam and property developer SDK Vastgoed had already developed a plan for an innovation campus centred on mechatronics. This combines mechanics, electronics and drive technology, the disciplines underlying humanoid robotics as well as related fields such as drones.
Next steps
With its doors now officially open, the Humanoid Application Center will spend the coming months scaling the first use cases with Dura Vermeer, Facilicom, Harvest House and Euro Caps. It will also seek new partner companies from other sectors.
The founders expect the number of participating companies to grow rapidly during the remainder of this year. Their aim is for the centre to develop from a local experiment in Schiedam into a regional test environment and, potentially, a European hub for the practical application of humanoid robots.
