The Battle Bots are coming back to a screen near you in just about one month. Once again, tough and predatory robots, some with fiendish faces or animal shapes, will be guided by teams of human beings in gear from cowboy to steampunk (not to mention onesie pajamas) through robot combat. See all 69 robots for the upcoming season. BattleBots began a decade ago in Long Beach, California. At the time, robot combat competitions were… let’s just say they were very much a niche sport. Fast forward a couple of years and they showed up on Comedy Central. One tournament [&hellip

When you check the Rexroth Troubleshooting Guides — and we’ll be happy to provide you with one — you are likely to see announcements like this: “Only Rexroth service engineers are allowed to replace the control section.” Allowed? Your Rexroth electric motion control components belong to you. Why would you not be allowed to repair them? Safety Bypassing the correct procedures is dangerous — not just for your machine, though it is, but for you and your coworkers as well. Electrocution, explosions, and other not-fun stuff are real possibilities if you try to fix something that you shouldn’t. We often [&hellip

Robots are good at lots of jobs, but not at all jobs. Assembling paper cups? Totally a job for a robot. Folding laundry? Absolutely not. In fact, housework is an area in which robots would be very welcome, but in which they just don’t shine. Folding laundry is super difficult because laundry is so variable in shape, size, color, and orientation that it’s almost impossible for robots to identify a piece of laundry and pick it up. Then robots would need to recognize the shape of the laundry when it’s not folded, figure out what shape it should be when [&hellip

Robots in manufacturing are a given. Robots in agriculture are a hope for the future. Robots in retail and food service are becoming a reality. Now, robots are moving into another area that has been experiencing labor shortages: construction. According to the Associated General Contractors of America, 79 percent of construction companies want to hire more people this year, but the number of available workers is expected to grow by only .5%. Why is the construction industry experiencing shortages? Some possibilities: High schools push kids to attend college instead of learning trades. A history of families handing down tradesman’s skills [&hellip

Where’s our flying car? Where’s our robot butler? How come people still have to work so hard in factories? The truth is, a lot of exciting technology is being delayed by human choices. One of those choices is the use of proprietary machine languages. When you have machines from multiple makers, the devices’ special sauces can make it impossible for them to communicate with one another. The makers hope you’ll choose to buy all your machines from one vendor. That’s one way to avoid communication problems. Another way is to use Open Source software. Rexroth uses Open Core Engineering to [&hellip

Increasing automation is affecting American workers, and expected to continue to do so. The Brookings Institution reckons that 25% of American workers will face employment challenges as a result of the current rise in automation. They’re bullish on automation, but they still say we need to be ready for disruption. We know that robots ought to take over jobs that are dangerous and dull, but what kinds of jobs will be hard for robots to manage? Certainly, any work that requires human interaction and problem solving should be left to humans. Robots can be programmed to give the appearance of [&hellip

It’s tough being a third-party repair shop for Rexroth and Indramat motion control systems. Rexroth continues to support legacy components, but Rexroth has never sold parts to third-party repair shops. Bob’s BBQ & Servo Repair Shoppe can’t get new parts. We’ll leave it to your imagination where they get the parts they use. They can’t get the specs or the expertise, either. Factory repair is your only real option to get your Rexroth components back to new, or even better than new. So it’s not unusual for third-party repair shops to come to us for help. That’s what happened earlier [&hellip

For every 10,000 human workers in the world, there are just 85 robots. Most of the world’s human labor force will never meet a robot at work. But it all depends where you live. In South Korea, there are 710 robots for every 10,000 workers — eight times the world’s average. Singapore is close with 658 robots per 10,000 workers. Next up is Germany with 322 robots for every 10,000 workers. This is less than half the robot frequency of Singapore, but Germany leads European nations in robot use. Japan at 308 robots per 10,000 workers is still an important [&hellip

Much of the research on automation’s threat to jobs focuses on the kinds of jobs humans are likely to lose. Driving, financial services, and repetitive low-dexterity tasks are likely to be taken over. Jobs requiring social interactions and opposable thumbs are safer from automation. The Institute for Spatial Economic Analysis (ISEA) has another idea. They see geography as destiny. Nevada is most likely to lose jobs to automation, according to the ISEA. This may be partly a function of which jobs are most popular in Nevada, but ISEA also claims that locations with low wages are more susceptible to job [&hellip

If you keep up with news about automation, you might have noticed that researchers have created robots that can reportedly eat, die, and possibly even reproduce. Don’t get too excited. The robots in question are actually an artificial metabolism “inspired by… slime mold.” The researchers don’t claim that they have made any robotic slime mold, but that they were inspired by slime mold to create a “slug-like body… generated by autonomous growth.” Even really convincing slime mold wouldn’t seem very lively to most of us. Hanson Robots, makers of Sophia, invites us to “Join us on this journey of discovery [&hellip