Universal Robots Celebrates 10th Anniversary of First Commercial Collaborative Robot
Linatex, a Danish supplier of technical plastics and rubber for industrial applications, bought a UR5 robot arm from Universal Robots (UR, universal-robots.com) to automate CNC machine tending in December 2008. However, instead of installing the robot behind safety caging, fenced off from people as was the norm, they deployed it right alongside their employees. Linatex was able to program the robot on its own with no prior programming experience. Ten years later, Linatex still uses a UR cobot.
UR co-founder and CTO, Esben Østergaard, delivered the first robot himself after having led a small team through three years of development in a basement at University of Southern Denmark. For his role in developing cobots, he was awarded the Engelberger Award, the “Nobel Prize” of robotics, earlier this year.