Monthly Archives: September 2016

Human-Technology Relationships

Imagine a path through the woods, a path that demonstrates the possibilities for human relationships with technology. Up ahead there are two branches: Machines make life easier for human beings. Machines take away the jobs of human beings. The first branch was certainly the most traveled before the first Industrial Revolution. An atlatl or throwing… Read more »

Guidelines for Self-Driving Cars

There’s been plenty of speculation about self driving cars. How safe will they be? What sort of moral code will they be programmed with? Will people really be willing to give up the fun of driving? The Department of Transportation has put an end to some speculation by producing “the most comprehensive national automated vehicle… Read more »

The Ethics of Self-Driving Cars

Bill Ford, great-grandson of Henry Ford, is asking stakeholders to get together to decide on an ethical system for driverless cars. The problem isn’t whether to allow passengers to eat in the cars or how to respond to drivers’ road rage. It’s who should live and who should die. If a self-driving car is about… Read more »

Robot Swarms

Servo motors are adept at telling robots to make precise movements. Safety systems override those commands when something potentially dangerous takes place. The potentially dangerous thing might be an overheating motor, a movement outside of specific parameters, or an issue with the voltage. It might also be some other entity moving into the robot’s space…. Read more »

What’s IndraDrive?

We often get calls from clients who have never paid any attention to the electric motion control at their workplace until a problem arose. Since we specialize in Rexroth electric industrial motion control, it can be decades between when a unit is installed and when someone calls us needing help. Rexroth motion control is that… Read more »

New Predictions for Cybercrime

Raconteur isn’t our go-to source for industrial motion control news, but a new article there is suggesting that automation will be hitting crime next. “As the workforce moves towards more automation, we could find 35 per cent of jobs now done by humans have been replaced by robots,” runs a quote from Tracey Follows, chief… Read more »

6 Steps to Close the Skills Gap

Ed Potoczak has written an article in Industry Week suggesting some practical steps to help the American workforce keep up with the industry needs in manufacturing. Improve manufacturing’s rep. Too many people have an outdated idea of the working conditions in manufacturing. Rexroth’s involvement with schools and communities is a good step in the right… Read more »

Soft Robots

An octopus-inspired robot is an idea we’ve met before, and it’s no surprise that a new version of the octorobot is being developed. After all, one of the big limitations of robots is that they’re hard. Soft robots with flexible limbs could do more things in more places than the more common hard metal robots… Read more »

Phones and Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0, the Industrial Internet of Things, the Smart Factory of the Future… it’s all possible because of… telephones? Actually, the technology required for the connected factory has been around for some time. But getting factories from their current dumb, dark, unconnected state to the bright, new, visible, smart factory of the future is difficult…. Read more »

Rexroth Open House

Bosch Rexroth collaborated with Coventry’s Institute of Engineering and Technology to host an Open House Day at the Advanced Manufacturing Training Centre. The open house welcomed kids from 8 to 15 to  meet working engineers and learn what they do. Introducing engineering as a possible future career path was a big part of the motivation, and… Read more »