This video, a farewell rear projector show from car maker Subaru when they left their headquarters of 48 years, contains some amazing robotic cameo appearances. (Did Godzilla also make an appearance?) 2014 has been a big year for industrial automation, with a projected increase of 7% in IAE (industrial automation equipment) worldwide revenue, doubling the… Read more »
Operator safety is a key issue for automation and industrial motion control. Uncontrolled motions made by machines can be deadly to humans in the same work space as machinery. The typical solution is to cage robotic arms or otherwise to keep humans and robots quite separate. It’s not so much that robots are intrinsically dangerous… Read more »
Designed by Freepik This is the day to rest, play, and celebrate the American worker. It was in the 1880s that it began to occur to Americans that there was plenty of celebration of presidents and honor given to inventors, investors, and the captains of industry, but there was no day acknowledging the part that… Read more »
We’re so used to automation that we can forget some of the reasons we use industrial machinery instead of having people do all the work by hand. Speed, obviously, and consistent results — those have been prime motivations for automation since the early days of the Industrial Revolution. But human safety is another of the… Read more »
The return of manufacturing jobs in the USA has gradually been on the rise, as we’ve been reporting for the past few years, but we still see a lot of uncertainty about whether that increase is meaningful. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of manufacturing jobs in the US has increased… Read more »
Rare earth magnets increased the strength of magnets by nearly 300 percent compared with old-style iron magnets. This made a big difference in servo motors, as you may already know — but what exactly are rare earth magnets? One thing they’re not: rare. Neodymium magnets and samarium-cobalt magnets are made of materials that are just… Read more »
When the movie Her — a film in which a guy falls in love with an operating system, only to discover that he was not a beloved as much as an early adopter — came out, some engineers and computer scientists were horrified by the implied waste of good technology. The tech we see in… Read more »
PLC stands for “programmable logic controller.” PLCs are used to control machinery, light switches, and other devices that need to respond quickly to follow programmed commands. A PLC has a CPU and input and output elements. It scans the input, and then, following the logic programmed into it, starts or stops the output devices. PLCs… Read more »
When something goes wrong, it’s wise to look at all the possible points of failure. Some can be repaired, replaced, or reconfigured. Some leave you feeling as though you’re at the mercy of someone or something else — in our case, the phone company. Some of our clients have been getting an out of service… Read more »
Baxter has something that a lot of people don’t have. Something that can’t be taught. Something that is extremely important when it comes to working with people. Baxter has, “behavior-based ‘common sense,’ capable of sensing and adapting to its task and its environment.” The new robot named Baxter was designed by the Rodney Brooks, a… Read more »
