Monthly Archives: November 2015

Don We Now…

Industrial motion control includes robotics, but there’s a whole category of robot ideas that doesn’t apply in factories, breweries, or printing shops. Industrial robots don’t have faces, they don’t have personalities, and they don’t have voices, whether cute or scary. And they don’t do ecommerce. Until now. The Wall Street Journal reports that Pepper, the… Read more »

Linear Motion Technology

So you’ve got some cool new linear motion technology with Industry 4.0 applications you want to show off? What are you going to do with it? Obviously, put it on a truck and drive it around for everyone to admire! Add a disco soundtrack and some catchy phrases like “absolutely robust,” and yes of course… Read more »

Multilingual Machinery

Your motion control devices don’t care whether you speak English, Spanish, or German, and the new Industry 4.0 interfaces can allow operators to choose their preferred language. For a nation of immigrants like the U.S., this can be a great advantage, especially when the skills gap limits hiring options. Your servos, drives, and controls may… Read more »

Going It Alone with Industry 4.0?

Dr. Steffen Haack, a leader at Rexroth AG, wrote recently that he keeps meeting people who plan to “go it alone” with Industry 4.0, the Industrial Internet of Things. That’s not going to happen, says Dr. Haack. “Industry 4.0 will not only trigger innovations in production technologies,” he says, but “the automation industry itself will… Read more »

Shadow Work

Move over, job loss — there’s a new potentially worrying consequence of industrial automation in town! Plenty of people worry that robots will take over all or jobs, and some may still be worrying about a robot uprising, but a new book by Craig Lambert suggests that there are human consequences to the rise of… Read more »

Rexroth Sponsoring Training Awards

Rexroth has announced that it will be sponsoring the Contribution to Skills & Training category at the Motion Control Industry Awards in April 2016, in the UK. Rexroth’s Drive & Control Academy makes it an obvious top candidate for the Skills & Training category, with both face to face trainings in locations in Europe and… Read more »

IoT and Canaries

IoT researcher Timo Elliott jokes that the first example of the Internet of Things was the canary that miners took into the mine shafts. Canaries would die from lack of oxygen before the miners realized they weren’t feeling so hot, so the hapless birds were an early warning system for bad air. The Industrial Internet… Read more »