Collaborative solutions in focus of production and assembly

When the Who’s Who of the automation industry gathers at Motek, Universal Robots of course cannot be missing. The Danish pioneer in collaborative robotics once again presented an industry-spanning, industrial professional audience with the latest solutions for production and assembly automation this year. After highly attended days in Stuttgart, the global market leader, together with its technology and development partners, is taking stock of a successful year-end: "Our conclusion is overwhelmingly positive," says Helmut Schmid, Managing Director of Universal Robots (Germany) GmbH and General Manager Western Europe. "At the center of our trade show presence were total solutions from our ecosystem Universal Robots+. With the chosen concept, we mainly wanted to express the flexibility and simplicity of our robots. And the direct feedback at the fair confirmed this: small and medium-sized enterprises are increasingly aware that automation is now not only an affordable and realistic option for them but also a real competitive advantage. More and more companies are therefore approaching us with very targeted inquiries and concrete ideas."

Collaborative Robots Dominate Motek

The growing interest and increasing demand for collaborative robot solutions for automation was clearly evident to visitors at Motek, not only at Universal Robots’ booth. Anyone exploring the trade fair grounds could experience the great variety of applications of the flexible and easy-to-program UR robots live in almost countless automation solutions.

From industrial quality testing at the booth of Attentra, a provider of image processing systems, to drilling and threading applications like those at Keusch Robotic Systems, and to WMV Robotics, which showcased mobile robot units — one thing was clearly apparent: "Where flexible and cost-efficient automation takes place, Universal Robots is not far," says Helmut Schmid. "More than a dozen exhibitors showcased UR applications at their stands. This underscores the versatility and flexible deployment capabilities of our robots and their proven reliability after nearly nine years on the market. We bring automation into all areas of industrial manufacturing."

Joint Booth with UR+ Partners

The German team of Universal Robots was not alone at their own trade fair booth. Various Universal Robots+ partner companies presented the latest solutions together with UR. Among them were representatives of unicam Software GmbH. They showcased OCTOPUZ on site, a tool for CAD-based offline robot programming and simulation, which has been a fixture in the showroom of the growing developer ecosystem since early 2017. Johannes Krebs, Managing Director of the Universal Robots+ partner, summarizes: "Working with UR at the trade fair is as straightforward as the cobots themselves. Universal Robots+ as an ecosystem and developer platform enabled us to bring an additional OCTOPUZ add-on from concept stage to reality for UR users. End users and integrators can now easily generate and simulate everything from simple to very complex robot programs offline. Unforeseen factors during the actual commissioning of a robot system are thus minimized, and the integration process is shortened and simplified — very straightforward, in other words."

Another partner on site was Weiss Robotics. "Because we presented our innovative grippers and force-torque sensors together with Universal Robots, we were able to demonstrate comprehensive, concrete problem-solving options to the audience," says Managing Director Karsten Weiss. "This allowed us to convince many trade fair visitors of the simple installation and commissioning of this integrated solution."