The Danish collaborative robot (co-bot) provider Universal Robots A/S today launched a robotic arm that can lift more weight than its widely-used UR20 model, saying the UR30 is a response to industry demand for stronger tools in machine tending, high torque screw driving, and material handling.
Built on the same architecture as its predecessor, the UR30 can hoist 30 kilograms, or about 65 pounds. With compact size and a weight of 140 pounds, it is designed to be moved easily between work cells.
Applied to logistics work, those attributes make the product appropriate for tasks such as material handling and palletizing of heavy products, relieving humans of the heavy lifting, Universal Robots’ VO for strategy and innovation, Anders Billeso Beck, said in an online press conference.
And improvements to its motion control ensures the perfect placement of large payloads, allowing it to work at higher speeds. “More manufacturing is becoming agile, flexible, and modular. The days of a static manufacturing line producing the same goods over and over again in the same way are gone. And overall, the UR30 doesn’t take up much more space in the workplace than a human worker would,” Beck said.
Universal Robot said it launches the new unit as global market for cobots is forecast to rise from $1 billion today to twice that size by 2027, due in part to labor and skill shortages and increasing demand for high quality products. The UR30 is available for pre-orders now and will begin shipping in Q1 2024.
