sensors founded 1946 headquarters waldkirch germany revenue 1.1 billion euro 2014 1 net income 69.8 million euro 2014 1 number of employees 6 957 2014 1 website www.sick.com the headquarters of sick in waldkirch sick ag or sick as spelled by the company based in waldkirch breisgau germany is a global manufacturer of sensors and sensor solutions for industrial applications . the company is active in the areas of factory and logistics automation and process automation . the company employs around 7 000 employees worldwide and achieved sales of eur 1.1 billion in 2014 . 2 the company is particularly well known for its laser scanners which are used as sensors in the fields of facility protection security ports and robotics . five lidars produced by the sick ag were used for short range detection on stanley the autonomous car that won the 2005 darpa grand challenge ; they can be seen on the roof of the vehicle . sick ibeo lidars were also used for obstacle avoidance mapping and pedestrian tracking on wambot the autonomous vehicle that came 4th in the magic 2010 competition . out of the 6 302 persons working for sick ag in 2013 3 836 were employed in germany with an average number of 239 trainees per year as at december 31 2012 . sick ag has ranked among germany s best employers for several years . history edit sick ag was founded in 1946 by erwin sick 1909 1988 ; he had received a license from the then us managed local government to operate his engineering firm . the economic breakthrough came in 1952 with the volume production of the accident prevention light curtain presented at the international machine tool trade fair in hanover . in 1956 the company moved from vaterstetten to waldkirch breisgau . sick ag has a global presence with almost 50 subsidiaries and participations as well as numerous sales agencies . according to the company s own statements it invests about 9 % of its sales revenue in research and development each year . products edit the company s product portfolio includes photoelectric sensors light grids inductive capacitive and magnetic sensors opto electronic protective devices vision sensors detection ranging and identification solutions such as bar code scanners and rfid readers analyzers for gas and liquid analysis as well as gas flow measuring devices . references edit wikimedia commons has media related to sick . a b c sick at a glance . archived from the original on june 10 2015 . retrieved 2015 06 10 . about sick . retrieved 2013 09 30 . retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title sick ag & oldid 713082774 categories manufacturing companies of germanycompanies established in 19461946 establishments in germanyhidden categories commons category with local link same as on wikidata navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version in other projects wikimedia commons languages deutschnederlands edit links this page was last modified on 1 april 2016 at 21 01 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view