SICK AG

What they do

SICK develops and makes sensors and sensor-based systems for industrial automation. Its products detect, measure and identify objects on production lines and in warehouses, protect workers near dangerous machines, guide automated vehicles and monitor emissions in process industries.

The company was founded by the engineer Erwin Sick in September 1946 in Vaterstetten near Munich and moved to Waldkirch, near Freiburg, in 1956. It has been a stock corporation since 1996 but is not listed, and it describes itself as family-owned, with members of the founding family on its supervisory board.

Why it matters

Sick's early breakthrough was the accident prevention light curtain, presented in 1952: an invisible barrier of light that stops a machine when a hand or body crosses it. That idea helped establish machine safety as a field in its own right and remains central to factory regulation today.

Sensors are the eyes of automation. As factories, ports and warehouses rely more on robots and driverless vehicles, the ability to sense surroundings reliably, and to do so to safety standards, becomes a bottleneck. SICK's work on laser distance measurement since 1989 and on LiDAR places it at the centre of that shift.

Products to know

• Safety light curtains: the product line that launched the company.
• Safety laser scanners: area protection for machines and vehicles, including the outdoorScan3 for outdoor use.
• LiDAR sensors: laser-based measurement for navigation, detection and mapping.
• Photoelectric sensors: a long-standing best-seller since the 1956 retro-reflective patent.

The German angle

SICK combines southern Baden roots with a strong research culture. Its home in Waldkirch sits close to the University of Freiburg and the Fraunhofer institutes in the city, part of a regional ecosystem for optics and measurement.

Gisela Sick, who co-founded the company with her husband, became principal shareholder after his death in 1988 and remained an influential figure until she died in 2024. Employee share schemes, introduced in 1999, add another layer to a family-held model typical of German high-tech Mittelstand firms.