Universal Robots now connect with industry standard protocol

The OPC UA protocol is one of the fastest growing standards for machine to machine communication and is a key component in ‘Industry 4.0’. The protocol is frequently used to enable data to flow from the production layer to either the business layer or monitoring systems.

“We know there have been a lot of requests to support OPC UA on UR robots. With this enabled it will open even more doors for our robots and play an important role in key markets”, says Christian Fenk, UR+ Ecosystem Manager – EMEA at UR.

The UR+ network works as an appstore for UR robots, where UR certifies both hardware and software to be used together with any of the UR models.

The robot itself does not support OPC UA out of the box. The necessary software can be downloaded and installed from the UR+ partner Rocketfarm. They have worked on the URCap for more than a year. The URCap translates information from the UR robot to OPC UA compatible information. By incorporating the translation in the robot, factories and production facilities avoid installing external hardware to handle the OPC UA translation.

This provides a simple and easy solution for larger and smaller production facilities to connect their UR collaborative robots to their monitoring systems. To improve the accessibility of the URCap. Rocketfarm is offering af 30-day free trial of the full license to test the benefits of the OPC UA. A URCap license can be acquired through Rocketfarm or through UR+, OPC UA Client/Server.