Danish KUBO robots win Web Summit

As the Nordics are getting ready for Slush in a couple of weeks, the biggest startup conference in Europe, Web Summit, was held first time in Lisbon. The massive event moved from Dublin after signing a deal with the Portuguese government last year. The contract is for three years and includes two years option.

Success for the Nordics

Out of several Nordic startups participating in Web Summit Alpha Startup Competition, one rose above all others. Danish robot startup KUBO was announced as the winner on Thursday evening. Kubo is an educational coding robot for kids, which started as a research project at Social Technology Lab from the University of Southern Denmark. They discovered that children learn through three modes of representation; activity-, image- and language-based learning. Kubo provides young children efficient activity based learning solution.

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Kubo consists of three things. The Brain – which controls all the logic and behavior, and there are different Brains for different subjects, such as language, math or coding. The Body – which has most of the hardware, like two motors, battery, and the sensors to read input from Kubo programming bricks. And TagTile, small flat bricks matching each Brain. You put them on a surface and Kubo drives over them, They are aiming to launch IndieGoGo campaign in January, so keep an eye on that.

Congratulations to the whole Kubo team, which seemed super excited about it at the backstage after the win when I briefly met them.

Web Summit was massive

53,056 people from 166 countries

Over 20,000 companies, 7,000 CEOs and 2,000 international journalists.

1500 startups, 1300+ investors.

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Facebook page livestream picked up 4,207,053 views over the course of the three days. Catch up with all of the talks here.