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industrial
Seegrid adds vision-guided lifting and stacking to product line
Frank Tobe
19 Jan 2014
Seegrid Corporation, a Pittsburgh-based start-up, has been providing driverless tugs for moving materials from point a to point b. Up until now they have just delivered the skids of material and then ...
Harvest Automation rolls out bots for nurseries
Frank Tobe
17 Jan 2014
Harvest Automation, a Massachusetts-based start-up, has begun shipping their robots. After five years and an A, B and C round of equity funding, plus some debt, totalling almost $25 million, their HV-...
Swiss to invest almost CHF30 million in digital fabrication research over next 4 years
Hallie Siegel
13 Jan 2014
Photo credit: Gramazio & Kohler, ETH Zurich
Over the next four years, the Swiss will invest almost CHF30 million to build a new National Centre of Competence in Research for digital fabrication i...
Robotic hand changer enables high-precision docking through dual surface resting
DigInfo TV
19 Dec 2013
KOSMEK has developed a robotic hand changer that can switch between robot tools automatically - and with high precision.
"Our aim is to enable a single robot to be used for many purposes. With this h...
Factory-in-a-Day: EU FP7 invests €7.9M to make robotics affordable for SMEs
Hallie Siegel
07 Dec 2013
Factory-in-a-Day is an EU initiative to develop a robotic system that is inexpensive, leasable, and can be set up and working in 24 hours. The goal is to make advanced robotic systems, which currently...
Lynne Parker on “What were the highlights at IROS/iREX this year?”
Lynne Parker
13 Nov 2013
I found the plenary speeches at IROS to be especially interesting. Marc Raibert gave an entertaining talk on the robots being developed at Boston Dynamics. It's encouraging to see that robots are beco...
From precision farming to autonomous farming: How commodity technologies enable revolutionary impact
Jeremy H. Brown
11 Nov 2013
The popular conception of farming as low-tech is woefully out of date. Modern farmers are high-tech operators: They use GIS software to plan their fields, GPS to guide field operations, and auto-steer...
Beaming-in to RoboBusiness 2013
Frank Tobe
27 Oct 2013
RoboBusiness 2013, held last week at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Silicon Valley, was a revitalized example of previous RoboBusiness events. Throughout the three-day event, there was renewed e...
Robotic cornucopia: Robohub focuses on the state-of-the-art and the future of agricultural robotics
Hallie Siegel
18 Oct 2013
With an ever-increasing need to feed the world's hungry, the agricultural sector has long been an important boon to the field of robotics: the sector's widespread acceptance and use of automation tec...
Frank Tobe on “Is open source a good business model for robotics?”
Frank Tobe
09 Oct 2013
To be able to choose between proprietary software packages is to be able to choose your master. Freedom means not having a master. Freedom means not using proprietary software.
- Richard Stallman, o...
ABB, Nike and a Silicon Valley VC invest $3 million in Grabit
Frank Tobe
08 Oct 2013
... Grabit, a 2012 SRI International spin-off, secures $3 million in Series A funding from ABB Technology Ventures, Nike and Formation 8, a tech VC in Silicon Valley....
Don’t blame technology for persistent unemployment | Slate
John Payne
06 Oct 2013
Posting on the Slate blog Future Tense, James Bessen takes issue with the notion that technology causes unemployment, illustrating his point by debunking a pair of frequently cited examples, textile w...
Co-robots really ARE a BIG thing
Frank Tobe
05 Oct 2013
UPDATED: October 6, 2013
Small and medium shops and factories (SMEs) are an untapped marketplace for robotics but direly in need of automation to remain competitive in this global economy. Two ne...
There are mobile robots and then there’s KUKA’s MOBILE robot
Frank Tobe
26 Sep 2013
... At the recent Hannover Messe trade fair, KUKA displayed their concept mobile robot showing how it could work a huge turbine blade.
... The device consisted of a KUKA omnimove mobile platform, a K...
Interest in industrial robots seen at Taipei Intl. Industrial Automation Exhibition and Robot Show
Frank Tobe
13 Sep 2013
... The trade show, held the last week of August in Taipei, had a record 550 exhibitors. “It is the age of intelligence and automation,” said Eric Chuo, chairman of TAIROA (Taiwan Automation Intel...
VW launches robot that collaborates with workers
Frank Tobe
30 Aug 2013
Human working with a UR5 assistant.
At a VW diesel engine production plant in Salzgitter, a Universal Robots UR5 robot carefully picks up delicate glow plugs and puts them into hard-to-reach drill ho...
China’s 5-Year Plan targets robotics as a growth industry
Frank Tobe
11 Aug 2013
... China's 12th 5-Year Plan (2011-15) targeted robotics as a growth industry necessary for China's development. It expects a compound growth rate of 25%, said Wang Weiming, deputy director of the Min...
OMC robot mixing system
DigInfo TV
19 Jul 2013
This industrial mixing system, developed by OMC, uses a multi-axis robot from Nachi.
In contrast with conventional mixing systems that rotate the container along two axes, using this multi-axis mul...
World’s first all stainless steel robot with seven degrees of freedom
DigInfo TV
17 Jul 2013
Kawasaki Heavy Industries has developed the world's first all stainless steel robot with seven degrees of freedom.
It will be used in the drug discovery and pharmaceutical fields to automate experi...
Laboratory animal management robot can care for 30,000 mice
DigInfo TV
17 Jul 2013
This robot is being developed to automate the management of laboratory animal colonies used by pharmaceutical companies and research institutions, primarily those that raise from 10,000 to 30,000 mice...
Tofu handling robot picks up soft, delicate food with ease
DigInfo TV
20 Jun 2013
Lands Work, a manufacturer of tofu-making machinery, has developed a robot that can pick up very soft foods such as tofu.
"First, the robot checks which way the tofu is facing, and how big it is, usi...
Academic and industry collaboration (Part 3): Interview with Minoru Asada
Florian Röhrbein
17 May 2013
Established experts in the field of robotics were recently interviewed by a group of scientists from the ECHORD project at Technische Universität München. Motivated by the fact that indust...
Robotic bartender assembles personalized drinks, monitors alcohol consumption, and takes social mixing to a whole new level
Hallie Siegel
16 May 2013
You're at a busy bar. You order your personalized cocktail through a smart phone app; a drink dispenser measures out the beverage according to your instructions and a Kuka robotic arm give it a shake ...
Low-cost robots like Baxter, UR5 and UR10 successfully entering small and medium enterprises (SMEs)
Frank Tobe
14 May 2013
Much has been said about the need to augment the skills and increase the productivity of small factory workers by using robotic assistants called co-robots. Europe funded an SME (Small and Medium-size...
ROS Industrial celebrates one-year anniversary
Frank Tobe
13 May 2013
ROS-I is developing and promoting a manufacturer-independent open-source library of drivers and the transfer of established components from research to industry - not just h/w interfaces and MS, IOS a...
Academic and industry collaboration (Part 2): Interview with Hiroshi Ishiguro
Florian Röhrbein
22 Apr 2013
The second interview of this four-part series about collaboration between academia and industry was conducted at the CITEC Summer School 2012 at the Center of Excellence “Cognitive Interaction Techn...
The great equalizer: How robotics frees manufacturers from consolidating in low-wage nations
John Dulchinos
15 Apr 2013
These days it is hard to read an article about the future of robots that does not include a reference to jobs. As a pure roboticist I object to the constant connection between the two, but as a concer...
Academic and industry collaboration (Part 1): Interview with Rodney Brooks
Florian Röhrbein
05 Apr 2013
This is the first in a four-part interview series about collaboration between academia and industry, conducted by a group of scientists from the ECHORD project at Technische Universität München. W...
Foxconn Foxbot update
Frank Tobe
08 Mar 2013
Ilian Bonev, a robotics prof at the ÉTS in Quebec, blogged “The truth about Foxconns Foxbot industrial robots,” and included a 2008 Foxbot brochure which shows the specs for their entire robotics...
Video: Throwing and catching an inverted pendulum – with quadrocopters
Markus Waibel
21 Feb 2013
Two of the most challenging problems tackled with quadrocopters so far are balancing an inverted pendulum and juggling balls. My colleagues at ETH Zurich's Flying Machine Arena have now combined the t...
ExOne IPO Successful: Shareholders Contribute Random Passers-by
Robert Morris
21 Feb 2013
Before I start bashing bankers, I’d like to congratulate the ExOne Company on a successful initial public offering (IPO). I haven’t seen much about ExOne [NASDAQ:XONE] on the robotics sites, b...
3’600-strong underwater robot sensor network returns 1’000’000th measurement, has scientists craving for more
Markus Waibel
05 Feb 2013
The Argo project, which has deployed a network of more than 3'600 robots covering all of the world's oceans, has returned it's 1'000'000th measurement....
Old and new at Automate 2013
Frank Tobe
29 Jan 2013
Industrial Robots; Robot Arms; Cameras, Scanners and Vision Systems; Collaborative Cage-free Robots; Mobile Robots; Robot Operating Systems; Warehousing and Materials Handling; New Technologies, and J...
Record order for KUKA Robotics
Wolfgang Heller
25 Jan 2013
Europe’s largest robot and equipment manufacturer German KUKA Roboter has won two record orders from German carmakers in November 2012.
The first order of 6,000 industrial robots came from Volk...
Innovative cooperation between workers and robots at Mercedes-Benz
Wolfgang Heller
25 Jan 2013
German automotive company Daimler has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with German KUKA AG, a leading systems integrator and robotics manufacturing company. The partnership focuses on huma...
Patent Watch: Robotic fabricator
Wolfgang Heller
24 Jan 2013
iRobot Corporation and Rayheon BBN Technologies Corp. have filed a US patent entitled "Robotic Fabricator", a completely autonomous all-in-one product fabrication robot that handles manufacturing (inc...
