Universal Robots
Universal Robots is a Danish collaborative-robot (cobot) manufacturer headquartered in Odense, Denmark, founded in 2005 by Esben Østergaard, Kasper Støy, and Kristian Kassow, and acquired by Teradyne in 2015 for USD 285 million. Universal Robots is the market leader in cobots, with more than 100,000 units sold worldwide and a 40–50% share of the global collaborative-robot market. The company ships two product generations — the e-Series (UR3e, UR7e, UR12e, UR16e) and the newer high-payload UR series (UR8 Long, UR15, UR18, UR20, UR30) — running the PolyScope 5 teach-pendant software stack and the next-generation PolyScope X platform. Universal Robots is unusual among industrial-robot vendors in publishing an extensive open developer surface: the C++ Universal_Robots_Client_Library, the Universal_Robots_ROS_Driver and Universal_Robots_ROS2_Driver, the RTDE Python Client Library, the Universal_Robots_Isaac_Driver for NVIDIA Isaac, the URCap SDK (PolyScope 5 Java) and PolyScopeX URCap SDK (TypeScript/HTML), and the URScript language. The wire-level protocols — Real-Time Data Exchange (RTDE), Dashboard Server, Primary/Secondary Client Interface, Reverse/Trajectory interfaces, XML-RPC, and the Tool Communication forwarder — are all documented and externally addressable over TCP, making UR cobots first-class citizens in third-party automation stacks, ROS/ROS 2, MoveIt, Isaac Sim, and the UR+ ecosystem (500+ certified end-effectors, vision systems, and URCap software extensions on universal-robots.com/plus). Universal Robots does not publish a public HTTP/REST API or OpenAPI specification — all programmatic access is via the documented socket protocols and SDKs.
More than an index entry, but the surface is still mostly links rather than artifacts — the cohort most likely to move a full band from modest, well-targeted work.
API Evangelist profiles Universal Robots the way a machine reads it — 9 machine-readable artifacts across 7 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.
Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — Universal Robots scores 17.2/100 (emerging), with a separate agent-readiness read of 0/100 (human only). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.
Kin Score
This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance.
Kin Score
How this is scored →scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
How we profile Universal Robots
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for Universal Robots. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.
APIs 7
Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
Universal Robots Real-Time Data Exchange (RTDE)
Real-Time Data Exchange is Universal Robots' synchronous binary TCP protocol on port 30004 that lets external applications stream robot state at the controller's 500 Hz cycle (e...
Universal Robots Dashboard Server
Plain-text TCP command interface on port 29999 used to power on/off the robot, load and play programs, query safety state, and manage installations. Dashboard Server is the easi...
Universal Robots Primary and Secondary Client Interface
Streaming binary interface on ports 30001 (Primary, 10 Hz) and 30002 (Secondary, 10 Hz) that emits robot state and configuration messages and accepts URScript programs and comma...
URScript
URScript is Universal Robots' purpose-built scripting language for cobot motion, I/O, and process control. URScript programs can be authored in PolyScope, streamed over the Seco...
URCap SDK (PolyScope 5)
The URCap SDK is the Java-based extension framework for PolyScope 5 that powers Universal Robots' UR+ ecosystem. URCaps add program nodes, installation screens, daemons, and dri...
PolyScope X URCap SDK
The PolyScope X URCap SDK is the TypeScript/HTML extension framework for Universal Robots' next-generation PolyScope X teach-pendant operating system that ships on UR15/UR20/UR3...
Universal Robots Real-Time Interface
Binary state interface on port 30003 emitting robot state at the 125 Hz / 500 Hz controller cycle. Predates RTDE and is still supported for low-latency one-way state streaming; ...
Scroll within the panel for all 7 ·
Semantic Vocabularies 1
JSON-LD contexts give the data shared meaning across APIs. We profile them because semantics are what let a machine reconcile 'customer' here with 'customer' somewhere else.
JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.
Universal Robots Context
JSON-LDSecurity Posture 1
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
Resources
Every other property we hold for Universal Robots — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.
Get Started 1
Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call
Documentation 1
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Build 1
SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with
Access & Security 1
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Learn 2
Tutorials, courses, talks, and written guidance
Operate 3
Status, limits, changes, and where to get help
Company 6
The organization behind the API
Other 6
Properties that don't map to a standard resource type
← All providers · Data indexed from github.com/api-evangelist/universal-robots · machine-readable index on apis.io