The Czech writer Josef Capek coined the word robot in his 1921 science fiction

play R. U. R, (above) which stands for Rosumovi Univerzln Roboti or Rossums

Universal Robots.
Now, Danish company Universal Robots is on course to achieve a turnover of
DKK1bn ($1.8m) by 2017 after having seen sales of its robot arms used in small
manufacturing increase more than 40-fold in the past four years.




I joined the company in September 2004 and I was employee No 4, says Enrico
Krog Iversen, chief executive of Universal, in which he is also a large shareholder.
Today, we have about 100 employees, mostly in our headquarters, but we are also
growing in the US and China and we are setting up in Singapore. We will probably
add another 50 people this year. We should reach our 2017 sales objectives and
have between 275 and 300 employees by then.
Robotics appears to be gathering pace in terms of technological advances and
sales, with the main centres of research centred on universities in Massachusetts,
California and Japan. In the last year, the US tech giant Google has bought eight
robotics companies, generating much anticipation of breakthroughs in the next few
years.
Universal Robots grew out of a cluster of tech boffins at the Danish Technological
Institute and the University of Southern Denmark in the city of Odense in 2005.