In the picture: The newest member of the KUKA robot family – the LBR iiwa lightweight robot

At the KUKA booth, the visitors of this year’s Hanover Fair can deal with the increasing digitalisation of production and cooperative network of employees and machines.

As Europe’s leading supplier of industrial robots and automated production systems, KUKA directly participates with its products and services in the fourth industrial revolution – Industry 4.0.

Therefore, robots will be the defining component for industry in the future – while the human takes centre stage. Sustainable automation concepts can only be developed with efficient, flexible and first of all safe production systems respecting the needs of the production staff.

KUKA will not only present ways in which KUKA products can improve competitiveness, but also prove its compatibility with the digital world.

Across the more than 1000 square meters of space in the Industrial Automation area, KUKA will be presenting innovative solutions that have one key characteristic in common: they are all designed to meet the requirements of Industry 4.0 and bring flexibility in the utilisation of production capacity, in logistics, in the sustainable use of resources.

KUKA achieves this by merging the IT world and conventional high-tech industry solutions into complete Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS).

In order to react in a flexible manner, to control process data streams from complex networks around the globe and to network digital controllers from different systems, interfaces based on Mainstream IT infrastructure are essential.

This was already a key concept at KUKA in the mid-90s when it brought the first PC-based robot controllers onto the market.

Subsequent KUKA innovations and developments also followed this core concept of simple integration. With the newest member of the KUKA robot family – the LBR iiwa lightweight robot and the controller Sunrise designed for direct cooperation between humans and robots – KUKA now takes it a step further, offering products that are truly “Industry 4.0-ready”.

Among other things, this means features such as a variety of external communication ports and an open and modular programming environment – or even just the ease of use and connection to external systems and machine control systems.

KUKA continuously focuses on open and interoperable standards.