The market for collaborative industrial robots has grown strongly in recent times and this trend is likely to continue. Jürgen von Hollen, President of Universal Robots expects growth for Cobots and his company to be similar in 2018. The last quarter of 2017 was the strongest in the company’s history . Overall, the Danes recorded an impressive 72% increase in sales last year. The success of UR may be due to its radical principle of simplicity and the fact that the company has managed to launch a kind of App Store for its products. Universal Robots+ is a platform for external developers to introduce software, extras, and additional gripping systems.

After opening its first US office in Boston, UR plans to expand further, with new distribution centers set for China, Italy, Turkey, and Mexico. A focus of interest is on China and the Asian region . Taiwan, for example, is the sixth largest market for cobots, even ahead of Germany. Universal Robots will be exhibiting its plug-and-produce solutions at this year’s Hannover Fair in hall 17, booth B32 .