Universal Robots is a Danish manufacturer of smaller flexible industrial collaborative robot arms (cobots), based in Odense, Denmark. The business volume in 2017 was USD 170 million. The company has 520+ employees (2018) and distributors in 50 countries worldwide.^[1]

History

Universal Robots was founded in 2005 by the engineers Esben Østergaard, Kasper Støy, and Kristian Kassow.^[2][3] During joint research at the Syddansk Universitet Odense, they came to the conclusion that the robotics market was dominated by heavy, expensive, and unwieldy robots. As a consequence they developed the idea to make robot technology accessible to small and medium-sized businesses.^[4] In 2008 the first UR5 cobots were available on the Danish and German market. In 2012 the second cobot, UR10, was launched.^[5] At Automatica 2014 in Munich the company launched a totally revised version of its cobots.^[6] One year later, in spring 2015 the table-top cobot UR3 was launched.^[7]

UR was purchased by Teradyne for US$285 million in 2015.^[8][9]

Products

The three main products are the compact table-top cobot UR3,^[10] the flexible cobot UR5,^[11] and the biggest one, the UR 10.^[12] All three are six-jointed robot arms with a very low weight of respectively 11 kilos, 18 kilos and 28 kilos. The UR3 and the UR5 have a lifting ability of 3 and 5 kilos and have a working radius of 500mm and 850mm (19.7 in; 33.5 in). In addition, the UR10 has a lifting ability of 10 kilos with a reach of 1300mm (51.2 in). Each of the cobots’ joints can rotate through +/- 360° and up to 180 degrees per second. Furthermore, the UR3 has also an infinite rotation on the end joint. The accuracy of the cobots’ repetitions is +/- 0.1mm (+/- 0.0039 in). Universal Robots collaborative robots (cobots) can work right alongside personnel with no safety guarding, based on the results of a mandatory risk assessment.^[13]

The safety settings of the latest generation of Universal Robots’ lightweight cobots can be adjusted for each specific solution.^[14] The robot arm can run in two operating modes of the safety functions; a normal and a reduced one. A switch between safety settings during the cobot’s operation is also possible. All these safety functions are safety rated PL d (EN ISO 13849:2008 ) and certified by TÜV NORD.^[15]

Due to their low weight and size, UR's cobots are mainly used within medium-sized businesses^[16] within industries such as packaging, automotive, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, metal working, and manufacturing.

In 2016, the company launched its online ecosystem Universal Robots+, and in early 2017 it launched a new online digital learning platform called Universal Robots Academy. Through this platform, users go through nine learning modules, learning how to program the UR collaborative robots.

In 2018, a brand new generation of Universal Robots' cobots called e-Series was launched raising the standard for collaborative robots.

• Official website