Universal Robots

A Danish maker of collaborative robot arms that shipped the first commercially viable cobot; its UR5e is a lab staple.

Universal Robots was founded in 2005 in Odense, Denmark, by researchers Esben Østergaard, Kasper Støy, and Kristian Kassow. In 2008 it shipped what is widely regarded as the first commercially viable collaborative robot, or “cobot” — an arm that can safely work in the same space as a person — and in 2015 it was acquired by the US test-equipment company Teradyne for $285 million. Its product line has grown from the UR3, UR5, and UR10 through the 2018 “e-Series” (including the UR5e) to the UR20 (2022) and UR30 (2024), with cumulative sales of more than 100,000 units. Its open interfaces, including RTDE (Real-Time Data Exchange), which reads and writes joint state in real time, have made it a common robot-arm brand in robot-learning labs and real-robot datasets.

ExampleMany real-robot datasets and VLA papers collect data on a UR5e, streaming joint or end-effector commands over RTDE at several hundred hertz.

Also called

UR

Related

Collaborative Robot · Universal Robots UR5e · RTDE · Streaming Servo Control · 6-Axis Robot Arm

Sources

Universal Robots - Wikipedia

As of

2026-09