25/05-12   -   Press releases

Robot from Universal Robots wins global prestige award

This week, the Danish robot arm UR5 from Universal Robots was announced winner of an international robot competition at the largest global automation exhibition “Automatica" in Germany. Hundreds of companies in Europe and Asia have, however, already given the biggest appreciation of all by selecting the innovative robot from Universal Robots to automate their production.

In a cutthroat competition with robots from Japan, USA, Germany and England, the UR5 robot from Danish Universal Robots has now been elected as the world’s most innovative robot. The award is also recognition of the record growth that the company behind the new flexible robot arm has obtained since 2008.

- The lead is a great big pad on the shoulders of our entire staff of employees and our 75 distributors throughout the world that have all worked very hard to secure the success of our robots, Thomas Visti, Vice President of Universal Robots explains.

The election took place on 23 May when an expert jury from the two international robot organisations, The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) and IEEE Robotics and Automation Society paid tribute to the inventor, Mr. Esben Østergaard, by handing him a statuette for Invention and Entrepreneurship in Robotics and Automation Award and a price award of USD 2,000.

The jury’s motivation for electing UR5 is that the actual product impresses by means of its safety, user-friendliness and flexibility, because the robot can work side by side employees and thereby increase efficiency. The jury did, however, also stress the fact that Universal Robots has made it possible for small and medium-sized companies to automate production, because the UR robots are both reasonable in price and easy to implement in production. In addition, the jury was impressed by the fact that Universal Robots in only a few years managed to establish a distribution of the robot in large parts of the world and present a remarkable sharp growth.

Global breakthrough
In 2011, Universal Robots really had their breakthrough when the company sold 400 robots globally. This year, the robot producer expects to at least double sales.

The name of the company behind the innovative robot in itself explains why the robots are so popular. The robots are universal in the sense that everybody is able to use them all over the world and for all kinds of automation tasks, and that is exactly what one of the inventors, Esben Østergaard, set out to do.

- In my capacity as robot scientist, I noticed a large gab on the automation market. The market needed small and flexible lightweight robots that would cover the need for small and medium-sized companies, Esben Østergaard explains. The idea was born in 2005, and the UR5 was a reality in 2008. Today, the UR5 robots also has a successor – the UR10 robot which has a wider range and greater lifting capacity, yet in other ways is based on the same successful principles.

Today, Universal Robots occupies 40 employees and all production and development is carried out in Odense in Denmark. The robot producer has distributors in 35 countries on four continents.

Additional info:
Vice President & Chief Commercial Officer, Thomas Visti, tv@universal-robots.com, +45 28 94 89 85
Invention and Entrepreneurship Award: http://www.ifr.org/events/iera-award/
Universal Robots, Press service in England, Garry Lockwood, +44 (0)7905 619060

Press images:
Thomas Visti, VP, Universal Robots: http://media1.limitless.dk/UR_Thomas_Visti/Thomas_Visti_1.jpg
Esben Østergaard, CTO in Universal Robots and the inventer of the robots UR5 and UR10:
http://media1.limitless.dk//UR_Esben_H_Oestergaard//Esben_H_Oestergaard_2_URrobots.jpg