The Danish collaborative robot manufacturer Universal Robots (hereinafter referred to as “Universal Robot”) announced that after continuous development, the number of its global employees has exceeded 1,000. Of all Danish companies founded after the millennium, only a few have so far reached this milestone.
In 2005, three young researchers from the University of Southern Denmark, Esben Østergaard, Kasper Støy and Kristian Kassow felt that the robots at that time were too bulky, expensive and complicated, so they founded Universal Robots in the basement of the university, hoping to create a more flexible, safe, Robots that are easy to install and program. In 2008, Universal Robots took the lead in launching the world’s first commercial collaborative robot UR5, and then developed a series of product portfolios, gradually growing into a leading company in the global collaborative robot market. Its headquarters in Odense, Denmark has also become a world-leading robot research and development center one. Today, Universal Robots has sold more than 50,000 collaborative robots worldwide and has branches/offices in more than 20 countries.
Kim Povlsen, President of Universal Robots, said: “Hitting 1,000 employees is a significant milestone for us. We have grown from a local start-up in a university basement to a global leader in collaborative robotics. We are very proud. Most importantly, companies around the world are using our robots to grow their production and business, which shows that our products are excellent and well-recognized.”
Adam Sobieski, President of Universal Robots Greater China, said: “While the global scale of Universal Robots continues to grow, the Chinese market has also made remarkable progress. China has always been a strategic location for Universal Robots. We will also continue to deepen the Chinese market and attract local talents. While developing our own team, we will also actively gather the strength of the ecology to vigorously develop the local partner network and UR+ ecological partners. With the dual support of technology and talents, we Not only can it provide products with excellent performance, but it is also determined to cultivate more collaborative robot experts to empower the automation transformation and upgrading of Chinese manufacturing enterprises.”
Continue to attract talents and inject fresh water into innovation
Kim Povlsen added: “People tend to focus on breakthroughs in products and technologies, but all of this is not spontaneous. It is driven by a high-quality talent team, so companies need to constantly absorb excellent talents. In Universal Robots, Our employees are experienced and highly innovative, aiming to continuously break through the boundaries of automation, so that more people can enjoy the fruits of automation conveniently. We believe that the future development space is huge. At this milestone moment, We are not only pleased with what we have achieved today, but also full of passion and hope to create more innovative products in the future.”
The new product UR20 launched by Universal Robots earlier this year is the latest example of the innovative spirit of its talent team. The market has an urgent demand for a 20KG load robot, but at the same time it does not want to sacrifice other performances. To meet this need, multiple teams at Universal Robots worked closely together, and after three years of unremitting efforts, they finally succeeded in completely refactoring the Robotic arm. In the end, the UR20 collaborative robot has achieved a comprehensive breakthrough in load capacity and operating range. While achieving a large load of 20KG and a working radius of 1750mm, the repeat positioning accuracy is as high as ±0.05mm, redefining the collaborative robot.
Universal Robots always pays attention to attracting talents and constantly injecting new blood into innovation. In the past year alone, Universal Robots has added more than 200 employees worldwide. In China, Universal Robots also moved its Chinese headquarters to Shanghai Jing’an International Center at the beginning of this year. The new headquarters is not only larger than the original, but also has a dedicated application and testing center, and will hire a group of application engineering experts to form a global excellence technology center to work closely with global product management and R&D teams more efficiently. In the future, Universal Robots will continue to recruit excellent talents in China to ensure that Universal Robots collaborative robots can continue to meet the growing needs of Chinese customers.
Develop China’s local ecology and integrate the wisdom of partners
While the scale of Universal Robots continues to expand, its ecosystem has also achieved continuous development. Universal Robots’ rich ecosystem includes more than 1,100 integrators, distributors and independent partners around the world, which create a wealth of components, systems and solutions for Universal Robots. Each model in the Universal Robots portfolio can be plug-and-play and efficiently integrated with the rich end-effectors, controllers, sensors, functional software and application suites in the UR+ ecosystem, so that it can be widely used in various industries and Deployment can be easily adjusted in different tasks.
In China, UR+ provides more than 230 kinds of component products, nearly 20 kinds of application kits, and mature standard solutions. These ecological products cover welding, palletizing, machine care, locking, assembly, quality inspection, gluing, picking, and handling , polishing and other major collaborative applications. Since UR+ provides standard solutions that are easy to configure and use, a one-stop product service platform, and highly integrated and high-quality robot peripheral products, end users increasingly regard UR+ as an important decision factor for supplier selection, and the UR+ ecosystem is becoming more and more Become a new driving force for the business growth of Universal Robots in China. Potential domestic partners of UR+ also saw the huge business opportunities contained in it, and actively invested more re