Universal Robots locates a global center of excellence in Barcelona

The Universal Robots group will boost innovation in robotic solutions for the packaging and picking sector from Barcelona, ​​with an international vision for the Danish multinational. It will do so by creating a center of excellence at its headquarters in 22@, where it plans to immediately incorporate five engineers and another five in the coming months, with the forecast of growing the global workforce to 50 employees by 2023.

The hub, the first of its kind for the Danish group in the world, will concentrate the entire productive and creative process of applications to improve packaging and palletizing solutions for the industrial sector.

Jordi Pelegrí, director of the subsidiary, highlighted that the center will generate in Catalonia an economic impact of 15 million euros for the packaging and distribution logistics sector until 2023, promoting a great international attraction for the city.

According to data extracted from the Packaging Cluster Report, the company values the weight of the sector in Catalonia, where 723 companies are installed, which invoiced 9,138 million euros in 2020, representing 4.08% of Catalan GDP.

The launch of the center of excellence coincides with a key moment for the industry and its digitalization process, in which the relationship between packaging and collaborative robotics has intensified. So much so that collaborative robotics solutions are taking center stage in the last phase of industrial production lines, due to their versatility and precision in the face of any change in the manufacturing process.

The most disruptive applications are designed for different phases, from labeling, either by applying stickers or validating the process thanks to artificial vision, to product boxing, to subsequent palletizing with applications that allow the cobot ---a robotic arm created to work alongside humans in a production chain--- to modify the mosaic of boxes in just one minute, ensure the correct placement of items, and ensure that each box contains the appropriate quantity of products.

The Danish group is organizing the world congress on collaborative robotics in the city, within the framework of the Hispack fair, at the end of May

With the aim of positioning Barcelona as a benchmark, Universal Robots has promoted the celebration of #CollaboratePack in the city, the largest collaborative robotics congress in Europe, which will take place from May 24 to 27, within the framework of the Hispack fair.

Universal Robots follows in the footsteps of the also Danish MIR Robotics which has a collaborative robotics hub in Barcelona for the knowledge of the applications of autonomous and collaborative mobile robots. Both companies share a corporate building and a training center space in the 1,500 square meters they have on Agricultura street. Founded in Odense (Denmark), they belong to the US-listed Teradyne ---provider of automated test equipment---.