First Look: Robotics giant which designs machines that interact with humans in the workplace opens first UK office in Yorkshire

The Denmark-headquartered company was founded 16 years ago by three university professors who were researching productivity in small businesses.

Together, they came up with a collaborative robot, known as a cobot, which is a replicated human arm with six axes of movement that can perform repetitive tasks safely.

Today, Universal Robots has offices all over the world and achieved a turnover of $326m (£261m) in 2022, up five per cent on 2021.

Although the business works with large companies, the majority of its customers are small firms that wouldn’t usually consider automation or robotics, expecting it to be too complex and too expensive to implement.

The potential for cobots, which can cost between £20,000 and £50,000 each, go beyond manufacturing.

Machines designed and manufactured by Universal Robots can also be found packing groceries for Ocado and taking glamorous red carpet photographs for Instagram,

Speaking to The Yorkshire Post, Mark Gray, UK & Ireland manager at Universal Robots, said: “The applications and tasks that we see the robots being useful in are wide and varied.”

Universal Robots, which works with the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University, and the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), recently launched a new robot with a 20 kilogramme lifting capacity for lifting boxes at the end of a production line and placing them onto a pallet.

"This will open up more applications for the cobot,” Mr Gray said.

“We’re looking at taking away the dirty, dangerous and dull jobs and giving back better quality, better productivity and better health and safety for workers."

He added: “In the UK we have the lowest productivity in the G7. Robotics are a solution here. It’s no coincidence that some of the countries with the highest rates of productivity have adopted robotics and automation as part of their industrial strategy.”

Mr Gray said that rather than getting rid of jobs, robotics would make the jobs of some employees easier and make them more productive.

“Our products are collaborative robots,” he added. “They are designed to work with people.”

Mr Gray said he hoped the move would be the start of a Yorkshire robotics cluster.

“Universal Robots was the first robot company in Odense, Denmark, but there are now more than 100 robot companies in this one small town. That’s what we want to start to do in Sheffield,” he added.

The new site aims to help regional businesses to better understand and work more closely with collaborative robotics. It will also host training sessions and meetings to strengthen relationships between developers, distributers and manufacturers.

The uptake of robotics and autonomous systems is expected to deliver a boost of £6.4bn in value added to the UK economy, by 2035. Universal Robots’ new centre will help train current and future workforces on how to work alongside and gain maximum benefits from collaborative robots.