Cobots are shaping the education industry by giving students the opportunity to learn about robotics first hand. Within interactive learning environments, students are introduced to automation and industrial applications, mastering robot programming in minutes.

To further lower the automation barrier, Universal Robots has developed the Universal Robots Academy, an e-learning program containing six modules designed to maximise user engagement.

CTO and founder of Universal Robots, Esben Østergaard, explains that it is unusual in the industry to make robot training curriculum of this kind available for free.

“But this is a long-term investment for us. We want to raise the robot literacy and the reason for speeding up the entry of cobots is not only to optimise production here and now,” says Østergaard. “We are facing a looming skills gap in the manufacturing industry that we need to bridge by all means possible. Facilitating knowledge creation and access to our robots is an important step in that direction. We’re excited to see the educational sector actively incorporating the Academy modules in their curriculum.”

The Universal Robots Academy contains six free online modules, is open to everybody, and available in English, Spanish, German, French and Chinese.

About Universal Robots

Universal Robots is the result of many years of intensive research at Denmark’s successful robot cluster, which is located in Odense, Denmark. The company was co-founded in 2005 by the company’s CTO, Esben Østergaard, who wanted to make robot technology accessible to all by developing small, user-friendly, reasonably priced, flexible industrial robots that are safe to work  with and  on their own can be used to  streamline processes in the industry. The product portfolio includes the collaborative UR3, UR5 and UR10 robotic arms named after their payload in kilos. Since the first UR robot launched in December 2008, the company has experienced considerable growth with the user-friendly robots now sold in more than 50 countries worldwide. At just 195 days, the average payback period for UR robots is the fastest in the industry. The company, a part of Boston-based Teradyne Inc., is headquartered in Odense and has subsidiaries and regional offices in the U.S., Spain, Germany, Singapore, Czech Republic, India, and China. Universal Robots has more than 270 employees worldwide. www.universal-robots.com.