A new study claims that the market for robotics — largely though not exclusively in industry — will grow by more than 17% in the next five years. Their other major claim? The big news for robotics in the next five years won’t be collaborative robots or VR or cyborgs, but robotics in the cloud.
It’s not a new concept. The term “cloud robotics” was coined in 2010 to describe any robot or automation system that has some or all of its sensors, instructions, and memory in the cloud, rather than within its own boundaries. As smart factories become daily reality rather than a bold vision of the future, machines will increasingly share data. The cloud is a big part of that.
When most of us use the cloud daily to stream our music, power our GPS, serve our news and movies, and deliver our groceries, it’s easy to overlook the fact that most of our machinery is self-sufficient.
We put the modules together and plug them in, and they get to work. They don’t communicate with anything or anyone, including us.
You can’t count exploding, shutting down with a hideous squeal, or refusing to start up after maintenance as communication. If you have any of that going on with your Rexroth electric industrial motion control machinery, be sure to contact us. We can help.
But apart from that kind of message, industrial machinery in most factories right now is separated from everything else.
That’s going to change. What will that change mean?
For one thing, our machinery is going to be much smarter. There’s room for much more data, many more sensors, and plenty more memory in the cloud than in an individual machine. There’s also greater opportunity for collaboration, which is another major factor in getting smarter decisions, and smarter machines, too.
So we’re looking forward to more cloudy machinery. In the meantime, we can help you gain a better understanding of your Rexroth electric industrial motion control, both new and legacy.