KUKA Laboratories GmbH

About us

In a strategic move to maintain and enhance KUKA’s leadership position, the company KUKA Laboratories GmbH was founded at the beginning of 2011 in order to focus on and centralise innovation activities of the KUKA group and to develop new products for the markets of the future. KUKA Laboratories will, e.g., develop robots that collaborate with humans. These robot assistants will be sold to industrial markets through KUKA Roboter and to non-industrial markets through KUKA Laboratories. Furthermore, KUKA Laboratories takes responsibility for the research and development of the KUKA controller and mechatronic technology.

KUKA Laboratories GmbH is a spin-off and 100% subsidiary of KUKA Roboter GmbH. KUKA Roboter is the market leader in Germany and Europe and the number three industrial robot supplier in the world. KUKA Laboratories employs about 100, KUKA Roboter about 1900 people in Germany and over 20 subsidiaries worldwide.

What motivates us

KUKA is one of the leading robot manufactures and has always developed innovative solutions to strengthen and maintain its technological leadership position. Examples are the first PC-based robot controller, the first 1000 kg robot or the new KUKA lightweight robot – LWR. To enable and to accelerate the development of such new technologies KUKA is cooperating with several universities and research institutions also but not exclusively in the context of many cooperative research projects on European and national level.

One important field of future robot applications is close human-robot-collaboration. Even though the LWR, due to its sensitivity, is a big step towards this aim, workspace surveillance is an important success factor and major breakthrough for such applications.