Atlas, the humanoid robot from Boston Dynamics, is retiring. It is being decommissioned and installed in the company’s museum. They shared a video that shows Atlas running, jumping, doing gymnastics, and also falling down, getting into a fix with an elevator, and otherwise failing. The new Atlas After a decade of service, Atlas has been… Read more »
We can all remember the supply chain issues of the pandemic, when we drove around town to multiple stores in search of toilet paper, yeast, and face masks. Now store shelves are filled with products again. But we still havre supply chain issues. Supply chain issues that began with the COVID-19 pandemic continue to disrupt… Read more »
Or are you? The problem is, it can be very hard to distinguish between problems with your Rexroth Indramat motion control system and problems with the way you have it configured. Is it the machines, or the humans? We hear about problems, for example, when systems are shut down only once every year or two…. Read more »
We know about the robot dreams people have…dreams of robot butlers, robot buddies, and general purpose humanoid robot buddies that will eliminate physical labor for humans. We know about the robot nightmares, too. Those include robotic overlords taking over our jobs and highly biased AI controlling the world. But a new study shows that people’s… Read more »
If your facility is in a warm, humid climate, when your servo is stopped you might run into issues with condensation. Condensation is about droplets of water forming on your servos when the temperature is close to the dew point. Dry environments like Arizona or Utah have dew points as low as freezing temperatures during… Read more »
Outsourcing engineering is controversial. A company that keeps enough engineers on hand to cover peak demand may feel as though they’re underusing their current staff as it is, and may be unwilling to look outside for support when the machinery fails. On the other hand, a company that keeps all the engineers running ragged obviously… Read more »
The Mechanical Turk was a very special machine, an automaton built in the 1700s to play chess. In reality, the “machine” was just a box with a chess board on top and a cupboard in the side. A puppet, intend to look Turkish, provided the drama. A slim human being could climb into the cupboard… Read more »
Business Insider suggests that the development of humanoid robots could be the space race of the 21st century. Remember the space race? In the mid 20th century, the United States and Soviet Union were in competition to put a man into space, to land on the moon, and, along with the race for dominance in… Read more »
Industrial robots are about to get a whole lot more dexterous. At the Hannover Messe, a leading international industrial technology trade fair, Bosch Rexroth’s innovative Smart Flex Effector stole the show, bagging the coveted Hermes Award 2023 for its groundbreaking advancements in robotic manipulation. This award-winning technology promises to revolutionize automation by granting robots a… Read more »
A container ship lost control and hit there Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, destroying the bridge, killing at least six people, and closing the Port of Baltimore. How will this tragedy affect supply chains in the United States and beyond? More than $80 billion in international cargo flowed through the port in 2023. There… Read more »
