ABB Opens Updated Robotics Facility
Robotics news seems to present itself all the time. I’m writing this from an independent coffee house in a small town in northern Illinois. The guy at the table behind me is quoting a robotic packaging system to a client. Weird. ABB held a big unveiling day at its...
Zebra Technologies Empowers Connected Workers
Still more catching up on news from the recent MODEX trade show in Atlanta. Zebra Technologies has grown from a specialty printer company that I used for a couple of projects in the 90s to an interesting automation solutions company. It has introduced extensions to...
The Eclipse Foundation Unveils 2023 IoT and Edge Commercial Adoption Survey Insights
The 5th annual Eclipse Foundation IoT and Edge Commercial Adoption Survey actually holds few surprise but shows ongoing trends of investment. I’m not sure if it is good news or worrisome that the C-suite seems to be more involved. These people hold the purse strings,...
RoboDK and Comau Partner For Robotic Simulation and Offline Programming
The amount of activity in the robotic sector continues to amaze me. Companies continue to exploit the power of partnerships to extend applications rather than trying to invent it all themselves (most companies don’t have that sort of funding to invest in extensive...
Blockchain Rises Again
Kevin Rose interviews Chris Dixon recently. Dixon provides a good overview of the current status of blockchain. I really haven’t heard much about that technology for years. A speaker at a Siemens event maybe five years ago extolled the future of pharmaceutical supply...
Generative AI Is Seemingly Everywhere
Generative AI is all the rage. When it hits all the main-stream media, though, it be already past its prime according to the Gartner Hype Cycle. NVIDIA chips power the GenAI surge. It takes a lot of compute and a lot of electricity to power this technology. Especially...
Turning The Giant: Leadership Challenges in Control and Automation
October 2003. We had a couple of issues of our new trade publication, Automation World, out into the world. There were two user conferences the same week that month. Foxboro (Invensys at the time) held its meeting in Houston. Emerson Process gathered users in Orlando....
Schneider Electric Debuts New Collaborative Robots
MODEX is a material handling show, so it’s not surprising that robotics of various kinds should take a featured place. I’ve written about several lately. I have to say that ever since I was introduced to robots in 1984 that Schneider Electric is not a name that pops...
Seeq Announces Generative AI Capabilities with Seeq AI Assistant
I sincerely hope you are not tired of reading about generative AI, because that will be the news for the rest of the year as each company introduced it as part of their software solution. This one comes from Seeq. Seeq unveiled the Seeq AI Assistant, a generative...
First All-natural Beverage Industry Plastic Bottle Cap
Completely biodegradable solution to replace conventional petroleum-based plastic bottle cap. Material science plus manufacturability are providing some really cool sustainability products. One reason dire projections seldom come true—humans are problem solvers. It...