The Mobile Robot Company Wins Industry Award

COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Oct. 8, 2026 /CourierPR/ -- The Danish startup The Mobile Robot Company has upended the forklift industry with its innovative J1600 dual-mode pallet jack, which has been named the 2026 Industrial Truck of the Year by the International Forklift Owners Association (IFOY). The award, announced in Stuttgart in June, was a significant victory for the company, which had no prior expectation of winning. The company, founded in September 2024, was led by CEO Emil Hauch Jensen and CTO Odin Kudahl Skovsted, who had previously worked together at Mobile Industrial Robots.

The J1600, which was launched on October 20, 2025, is a 1,600-kilogram pallet jack that operates both as a traditional forklift in manual mode and as an autonomous vehicle in dual mode. The human operator always picks up the pallet, ensuring full control and safety. The company's founders, who previously had extensive experience deploying over 10,000 robots in China and Europe, recognized the need for a product that could bridge the gap between traditional forklifts and fully autonomous systems.

In October 2024, during a conference in Odense, Odin Kudahl Skovsted posed a question to Emil Hauch Jensen: "Emil, why don't we do this ourselves?" This question led to the founding of The Mobile Robot Company, a company that now sells its dual-mode pallet jacks at a price half that of comparable robots, through a network of eight-country distributors.

Jensen's vision is that in the next decade, all pallet jacks will either be fully automated or dual mode.

The company's success is not limited to its product. Jensen treats the IFOY award as a validation of the company's approach rather than a final goal.

The company's success in the forklift industry has not gone without competition. While the company's competitors can copy the format of dual-mode systems, Jensen argues that The Mobile Robot Company's product is easier to use and better designed.