A robot in the central lab of University Hospital Essen

A laboratory where automation is not a future question

The central laboratory of Universitätsmedizin Essen has run an open-plan lab of almost 800 square metres in a single room since 2004. A Siemens automation line roughly 30 metres long has connected analytical systems from several manufacturers since 2019. For 33 clinics with around 1,700 beds it performs 8.5 million analyses a year - about 6,000 tubes and 2,000 requests every day, 365 days a year, around the clock. The lab is accredited to DIN EN ISO 15189 by the German accreditation body DAkkS.

It is exactly in a laboratory like this that the limit of stationary automation becomes visible. The line connects whatever sits on it. Everything happening beside it stays manual: the walk to a specialist workstation, tending an instrument that is not on the track, the handover from the pneumatic tube system to the line. With 52 medical technical and 7 academic staff, every hour spent walking is an hour not spent on analysis.

The task: the work between the instruments

What was automated was not the analysis - that has run on the line for years - but the work between the instruments. The 2024 annual report of Universitätsmedizin Essen names three areas for the mobile robot:

• Sample transport within the lab to various specialist workstations.
• Loading and unloading a dedicated robotic centrifuge.
• The route from the pneumatic tube receiving station to the bulk-loading modules of the automation line - explicitly intended for the hours outside regular service: nights, weekends and public holidays.

The third point is the interesting one. Essen runs a high-speed pneumatic tube system connecting both central emergency departments to the lab. Samples arrive in seconds - and then wait until somebody feeds them to the line. That handover between two very fast systems was the manual gap.

So the requirement was not speed. It was coexistence: working in an open-plan lab with almost sixty people moving through it, without a safety fence, without a fixed route, and without interrupting the running operation.

The solution: uLab Mobile in hybrid operation

Since the end of 2024, and in routine operation since January 2025, uLab Mobile from United Robotics Group has complemented the stationary automation in the central lab. The hospital describes the operating model as a hybrid operation of human and robot in the same room - staff and robot share the same floor, with no spatial separation.

How the robot works there, in the hospital's own words from its 2024 annual report:

• Perception. AI-based image processing recognises objects and understands what is happening around it. It identifies barcodes, tube colours and fill levels.
• Navigation. It navigates the central lab autonomously and picks the shortest and most effective route, moving independently in a complex and dynamic environment.
• Interaction. It works together with the other laboratory instruments and with the modules of the automation line.
• Task profile. It takes over standardised, monotonous and repetitive tasks in the laboratory.

The hospital sums up the combination this way: stationary robotics in the form of the automation line, combined with mobile service robotics, leads to better adaptability to individual workflows while keeping spatial flexibility.

One point of clarity: the accreditation to DIN EN ISO 15189 applies to the laboratory, not to the robot. uLab Mobile is not a validated GxP system out of the box.

The numbers, and what they do not say

The hospital has not published figures on saved walking distance, turnaround times before and after, or hours freed up. We do not have them either, so this page does not claim them. What is published is the context the robot works in:

• 8.5 million analyses a year (2024)
• around 6,000 tubes and 2,000 requests per day
• 33 clinics, around 1,700 beds
• 52 medical technical and 7 academic staff
• operation 365 days a year, seven days a week, around the clock
• automation line of roughly 30 metres, running since 2019
• accredited to DIN EN ISO 15189 (DAkkS)

On the effect, the hospital is explicit about one thing in its 2024 annual report: robotics relieves and supports the specialist staff in the laboratory, and jobs are not lost as a result. Dr Marc Wichert, head of the central laboratory, is quoted there as saying that the robot works with AI support and is a very good addition to their stationary robotics.

Source for all figures and quotations on this page: Universitätsmedizin Essen, annual report 2024, "Mobiler Service-Roboter entlastet Fachkräfte im Zentrallabor", and the central laboratory's own pages at zentrallabor.uk-essen.de. Retrieved 29 August 2026.

Where the same task exists

The task in Essen is not specific to Essen. It appears wherever a stationary automation line exists and the work beside it stays manual:

• Hospital laboratories with a TLA line and attached specialist workstations. As soon as not every analyser sits on the track, a manual side route appears. That is the rule, not the exception.
• Laboratories with pneumatic tube systems. A high-speed transport that ends at a receiving station nobody is standing at is only as fast as the person who empties it.
• 24/7 laboratories with thin night staffing. The sample volume at night falls less sharply than the headcount does.
• Blood banks and transfusion medicine, with a high share of standardised transport steps between cold storage and analysis.
• Private laboratory groups and referral labs with high tube throughput and several lines on one site.
• Microbiology and molecular diagnostics, where samples change station several times between preparation, cold storage and analysis.

The common denominator is not the discipline. It is the number of handover points between automated islands. The more there are, the larger the share of qualified working time spent on walking and handling.