How Underautomation’s Universal Robots SDK Helps Drive Innovation at Siemens Healthineers and Siemens Wittelsheim

Siemens is one of the world’s most advanced engineering and technology companies. Across its global operations, Siemens is accelerating automation to improve efficiency, drive innovation, and give engineers new ways to build and test advanced systems. In two key European sites, the Siemens Healthineers Innovation Center in Erlangen, Germany, and a Siemens SAS in Wittelsheim, France, Siemens has partnered with Underautomation to deploy the Universal Robots Communication & Toolkit SDK to enhance robotics integration and development.

Siemens Healthineers Innovation Center, Erlangen

At the heart of Siemens Healthineers’ medical technology innovation is the new Innovation Center in Erlangen, Germany. This center serves as a collaborative space where engineers, research partners, and external innovators co-develop and virtually prototype cutting-edge healthcare solutions. The facility focuses on advancing technologies from early concept stages to simulated proof-of-concepts, including extended reality applications and digital simulations for medical systems.

Siemens Healthineers is also a global leader in medical imaging, diagnostics, and laboratory automation, with robotics playing an increasing role in streamlining clinical workflows and improving reliability.

In this environment, the Underautomation Universal Robots SDK becomes a powerful enabler. It allows developers to integrate Universal Robots arms with Siemens’ internal systems, simulation environments, and digital twin workflows. Teams can:

• Control robots from custom applications, speeding up development of automated testing and prototyping loops.
• Integrate with SIMATIC and PLC systems to align robot behavior with complex industrial and healthcare automation stacks.
• Use the SDK for virtual commissioning and digital twin validation, reducing the time from idea to tested implementation.

This capability supports Siemens researchers and engineers as they push boundaries in medical device automation and system validation.

Siemens Facility in Wittelsheim, France

In Wittelsheim, France, Siemens operates a specialized engineering and test bench site used for validating and benchmarking automation systems. Test benches are critical for engineering teams to evaluate how manufacturing and control systems behave under real-world conditions before deployment. Here, robotics plays a central role in simulating complex assembly, inspection, and material handling scenarios.

While public information about this specific test bench is limited, the context of industrial robotics test facilities suggests that teams there focus on evaluating automation performance, integration with industrial controllers, and robustness of robotic solutions under varying loads and sequences. In such environments, the Universal Robots SDK from Underautomation enables:

• Custom motion and sequence control that engineers can tailor for specific test cases.
• Real-time data integration with monitoring and analytics platforms to benchmark robot performance.
• Extended automation programming interfaces that go beyond standard graphical programming, allowing heavy customization when validating new products or automation strategies.

By using the SDK at Wittelsheim, Siemens engineers can build and refine advanced automation scenarios that feed into larger production and quality assurance frameworks.

Why the Universal Robots SDK Matters

Universal Robots is already widely used by Siemens sites thanks to its flexibility, ease of use, and compatibility with large automation ecosystems. At sites like Erlangen, hundreds of UR cobots are deployed to streamline processes and free engineers from mundane tasks.

The Underautomation Universal Robots SDK enhances this even further by bringing professional developers closer to the robot hardware through:

• Advanced communication tools that bridge UR robots with proprietary software and industrial automation tools.
• Toolkit support for Python, C#, and other modern languages, expanding what robotics teams can build.
• Improved data flow and control interfaces, enabling custom dashboards, dashboards tied into analytics systems, or machine learning workflows handling automation logic.

For Siemens, this means more efficient delivery of automation systems, tighter integration with their digital engineering environments, and a scalable path toward embedding robotics into both medical technology R&D and industrial automation testing.

Conclusion

The collaboration between Underautomation’s Universal Robots SDK and Siemens’ advanced engineering sites in Erlangen and Wittelsheim illustrates how powerful software tools unlock new possibilities in automation. By giving engineers deeper access and control over robot behavior, the SDK boosts innovation, accelerates development cycles, and helps Siemens push boundaries in both healthcare and industrial automation.

Whether it’s prototyping intelligent medical workflows in Erlangen or validating complex automation strategies in Wittelsheim, the SDK is a key contributor to smarter, faster, and more customized automation solutions.

Useful links

• https://www.universal-robots.com/case-stories/siemens-gwe/
• https://www.universal-robots.com/landing-pages/accelerating-automation-adoption-siemens-x-universal-robots-x-mobile-industrial-robots/