Yaskawa Electric builds its industrial robots under the Motoman name, with arms from the 0.5 kg MotoMini to 800 kg palletizing robots, and says more than 600,000 Motoman robots are installed worldwide. Prices aren’t published. In the US you buy through Yaskawa Motoman’s sales team in Miamisburg, Ohio, or one of its integrator partners, and certified pre-owned robots are sold on request.
Yaskawa was founded in 1915 in Kitakyushu, Japan, and shipped its first robot, the MOTOMAN-L10, in 1977, according to its 500,000-unit announcement from 2021. The 600,000 figure is from Yaskawa Motoman’s company page, checked October 23, 2026.
Motoman robot families by payload
| Family | Payload | What it’s for |
|---|---|---|
| MotoMini | 0.5 kg | Tiny parts, lab and electronics work |
| SG (SCARA) | 3–6 kg | Small-part assembly, 400–650 mm reach |
| MPX (paint) | 5–15 kg | Painting and coating |
| SDA / SIA | 5–50 kg | Dual-arm and seven-axis single-arm assembly |
| AR (arc welding) | 6–25 kg | Welding, 727–3,124 mm reach |
| GP | 4–600 kg | General handling, from small parts to car bodies |
| HC (collaborative) | 10–30 kg | Work next to people without full guarding |
| MOTOMAN NEXT | 7–35 kg | Adaptive tasks with on-robot AI computing |
| PL (palletizing) | 80–800 kg | End-of-line stacking |
Ranges are from Yaskawa Motoman’s industrial robot catalog, which also lists specialized lines such as MPP, PH, MH, MYS, GA and SP for packaging, handling and spot welding. Ask sales for the exact variant’s load diagram before you settle on a family; the catalog figures are family ranges.
HC cobots
The HC series has three main arms:
- HC10DTP: 10 kg, 1,200 mm reach
- HC20DTP: 20 kg, 1,700 mm
- HC30PL: 30 kg, 1,700 mm, built for palletizing cases next to people
All three work with the YRC1000 or YRC1000micro controller and the Smart Pendant, and Yaskawa also sells HC welding packages. Compared with a pure cobot maker such as Universal Robots, the HC arms run on the same controller family as Yaskawa’s industrial robots, which matters if your plant already has Motoman cells and maintenance staff trained on them.
MOTOMAN NEXT
MOTOMAN NEXT is Yaskawa’s line for tasks where parts aren’t in a fixed position. It pairs an arm with the YNX1000 controller and an Autonomous Control Unit that runs perception and planning software on the robot. Current arms:
- NEX7: 7 kg, 927 mm
- NEX10: 10 kg, 1,101 mm
- NEX20: 20 kg, 1,552 mm
- NEX35: 35 kg, 2,063 mm
Yaskawa markets the line under a physical AI label. Our article on MOTOMAN NEXT with Gemini Robotics-ER shows how a reasoning model can sit above the controller, and our NVIDIA physical AI guide covers the simulation tools Yaskawa and its peers use.
Controllers, programming and ROS 2
Most current Motoman arms run on the YRC1000 or the compact YRC1000micro, programmed from the Smart Pendant. Yaskawa’s developer tools page (updated February 26, 2026) lists:
- INFORM, the native robot language every controller supports.
- MotoSim EG-VRC for offline programming and simulation.
- MotoPlus SDK, a paid add-on for C applications running on the controller.
- A Smart Pendant Extension SDK for C# and Java apps on the pendant.
- MotoROS2, the official open-source ROS 2 interface for DX200, YRC1000 and YRC1000micro. It needs the MotoPlus SDK to build and accepts trajectories of up to 200 points.
If you plan to feed motion from ROS 2, check that 200-point limit against your longest path before you design around it; long paths need to be split.
How to buy a Motoman robot in the US
- Pick the family and variant by payload and reach; our robot arm selection guide covers the numbers.
- Request a quote through “Contact Sales” on motoman.com, or work through an integrator from Yaskawa’s partner list.
- For a lower-cost start, ask about certified pre-owned and demo robots. Yaskawa lists them as “Contact for Pricing” with its Motomax warranty.
- Book operator and programmer training through Yaskawa Academy, which runs in-person and online courses.
For palletizing cells, the job the PL and HC30PL arms are built for (compared with rival cobots in our cobot palletizer guide), our analysis of one robot serving two packing lines shows how to measure line waiting before you decide how many robots to buy.
How Yaskawa compares
Yaskawa, FANUC, ABB and KUKA are the four names on most industrial-arm shortlists. See our pages on FANUC’s lineup and KUKA’s lineup for the same view of each.
Yaskawa Motoman product, developer and company pages checked October 23, 2026.