Universal Robots (UR), the Danish collaborative robot (cobot) company, has announced that it has integrated the Standard Robot Command Interface (SRCI) into its software. This makes UR one of the first industry cobot vendors to offer this functionality.
The SRCI is a new standard for robotics manufacturers, designed to establish a unified interface between PLCs and robots. By fully integrating SRCI into its software, UR aims to enhance the connectivity capabilities of its cobots, ensuring seamless integration with Siemens PLCs. Siemens is currently the first and only PLC vendor supporting SRCI in the automation market, providing UR customers with a frictionless and efficient automation solution.
Of this development, Daniel Friedman, Global Director of Strategic Partnerships at Universal Robots, noted, “By having our robots connect seamlessly to a global industry leader like Siemens, we can now offer our partners and customers, both existing and prospective, faster integration and higher ease of use. We strive to make cobot automation as simple as possible for our customers and this is yet another step in our commitment to provide automation for anyone, anywhere.”
The SRCI’s uniform cross-manufacturer data interface ensures interoperability in robot implementation, standardizing definitions and commands between UR cobots and Siemens PLCs. This facilitates setup and simplifies UR robots’ deployment into existing and new Siemens ecosystem-based production lines.
“We are encouraged that cobots from Universal Robots can now be controlled via the SRCI and programmed by Simatic users,” says Rolf Heinsohn, Senior Vice President, Factory Automation Segment Control at Siemens. “We want to accelerate Factory Automation and scale the use of robots in industry by making them simple and available to all our customers` employees. It is a great advantage for our customers to be able to easily integrate and use UR’s robots together with the Siemens PLCs in their production.”
The SRCI is available for UR’s e-Series family and the next-generation robots UR20 and UR30. It can be installed and activated with PolyScope version 5.15 or higher via add-on URcap software.
Click here for more information about Universal Robots’ new Standard Robot Command Interface and here to learn more about the Siemens SIMATIC Robot Integrator.
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