Open, Linux-based automation platforms create space for innovation. A good example is provided by the young Swedish company Cognibotics, which is presenting its brand-new Juliet&Romeo software at two booths of partners at automatica 2025: Bosch Rexroth and KEBA. Openness and the use of standards make it possible to focus on core expertise and industrial innovation that none of the big players with their proprietrary software can deliver.
The Swedish company Cognibotics was founded in 2013 by CTO Klas Nilsson. As a spin-off from the RobotLabs of the Faculty of Technology (LTH) at Lund University in southern Sweden. The basic idea was to use data on motor torques and clamping fixtures for the high-precision calibration of robot movements.
Cognibotics has continuously expanded its activities in various EU-funded and Swedish scientific projects for automatic control and mechatronics.
Today, the manufacturer offers its own hardware on these topics for the products of a number of well-known robot manufacturers, for example for the calibration of robot arms or handling devices for order picking in intralogistics.
Innovative robot programming from Cognibotics (Image Cognibotics)
Since 2025, the portfolio has also included its own robotics programming language called Juliet&Romeo. It is a very modern programming framework with a generic high-level language for robotics. The result is apps that run as containers under Linux. Cognibotics went in search of ready-made automation platforms. And found what it was looking for at KEBA and Bosch Rexroth.
Openness is crucial for innovation
It is an excellent example of the role of open, Linux-based automation platforms as drivers of innovation. At the robotics and automation trade fair automatica 2025 in Munich, Juliet&Romeo was presented to both new partners. At Bosch Rexroth on ctrlX OS and ctrlX Core. At KEBA on Kemro X.
Cognibotics presents Juiet&Romeo at the automatica stand of Bosch Rexroth (Photo Sendler)
This very special software and its functionality is not something that the two automation specialists themselves want to concentrate their development capacities on. And the Linux platforms from Bosch Rexroth and KEBA are not something that Cognibotics also wants to develop.
According to the manufacturer, Juliet is the world’s first generic robot programming language that enables safe real-time multitasking. It supports the description of the entire automation system – motion coordination, process logic, sensor handling, configuration, user interfaces and AI integration – in a powerful, expressive syntax.
Romeo is a real-time virtual machine designed for safe execution and fast response to application events. This runtime environment is currently tailored for Juliet and includes automatic memory management. However, it also supports all languages that conform to the Romeo bytecode format. Users can download the development tools to their PC free of charge, if required as an integrated addition to Visual Studio or Theia. The Romeo runtime environment is available for download from the Bosch Rexroth ctrlX OS Store.
In an interview at the trade fair, Sofie Nilsson (photo Sofie Nilsson), Business Unit Manager and CPM, explained that Juliet&Romeo is currently running on these two platforms. Cognibotics is very open about what else it will run on in the future. They are meeting with great interest with their software, as they have hit the nerve of the times. Younger developers in companies are particularly enthusiastic about the possibilities of being able to develop modern software in a convenient way with Juliet&Romeo.
It is a typical example of the current trend in the industry away from monolithic, proprietary solutions and towards open standards. Instead of one main player offering as much as possible, many smaller, highly specialized players whose software communicates and functions with that of other players via APIs.
It is time for users of such software and platforms to make their practical experience available to the general public. One attempt to make this possible is the Smart Automation user survey on the Industrie-Digitalisierung news portal. But I will also publish every user report, whether as a text by e-mail or on the phone, in a form agreed with the author.