After many years of trade show attendance, I have formulated a law about trade shows that I think all trade show attendees will find helpful. I call it “Jernigan’s Law.”
There is an inverse relationship between the length of exhibitors’ skirts and the number of actual new products being exhibited.
That is, when there’s really nothing new to see, there will be short-skirted girls hanging around to distract you from the fact.
Most of what’s really new in motion control these days is about gaming. If you’ve been yearning for truly realistic human-motion-controlled swordplay, you’re in luck.
As far as industrial motion control goes, the news is thin. Siemens has delivered its millionth drive. Bosch Rexroth continues to blaze the trail in energy efficiency and noise control. Small improvements are the order of the day.
Actually, this is a good thing. As we wrote in What’s the Opposite of Planned Obsolescence?, having machinery that keeps going for a long time is a good thing on the industrial level.
There could be some brief entertainment value to having people control factory motion control with realistic swordplay movements. “Brief” because — while it could make a good slapstick movie scene — it would be pretty impractical in real life. Apart from that, we’ll enjoy the short skirts.