The Real Cost of Robotics

Realize that the arm is but a tiny part in the long list of equipment that had to be provisioned, installed, and configured in the name of your automation project.

Japanese Robotics Giant Gives Its Arms Some Brains

Will Knight for MIT Technology Review:  The big, dumb, monotonous industrial robots found in many factories could soon be quite a bit smarter, thanks to the introduction of machine-learning skills that are moving out of research labs at a fast pace. Fanuc, one of the world’s largest makers of industrial robots, announced that it will work with Nvidia, a Silicon Valley chipmaker that specializes in artificial intelligence, to add learning capabilities to its products. The deal is important because it shows how recent advances in AI are poised to overhaul the manufacturing industry. Today’s industrial bots are typically programmed to do a single job very precisely and accurately. But each time a production run changes, the robots then need to be reprogrammed from scratch, which takes time and technical expertise.   Cont'd...

Our Concept of an Open-Source Online Platform for Makers and Educators to Share Their Projects in the Robotics Makers Community

This is an outline plan to create and develop an open-source robotics community. If you have some ideas and want to share them, please let me know.

Japan Robot Week 2016 Gearing up to Welcome Visitors from October 19th to 21st

This years event features The 7th Robot Award ceremony and exhibition, joint exhibitions from universities and laboratories, and other fascinating programs related to service robots.

A Look at a Danish Robotics Cluster

Clusters don't just happen by accident. They need knowledge sharing, community spirit and participation by all of the stakeholders.

Google Canceled the Launch of a Robotic Arm After it Failed the 'Toothbrush Test'

Mark Bergen for Bloomberg:  Google published research this week detailing how its software enables robots to learn from one another. To demonstrate, the company’s scientists showed videos featuring robotic arms whirling inside its labs. Google’s robotics group built those machines and wanted to sell them to manufacturers, warehouse operators and others. However, executives at Google parent Alphabet Inc. nixed the plan because it failed Chief Executive Officer Larry Page’s "toothbrush test," a requirement that the company only ship products used daily by billions of people, according to people familiar with the situation.   Cont'd...

Omnidirectional Mobile Robot Has Just Two Moving Parts

Byron Spice for Carnegie Mellon University:  More than a decade ago, Ralph Hollisinvented the ballbot, an elegantly simple robot whose tall, thin body glides atop a sphere slightly smaller than a bowling ball. The latest version, called SIMbot, has an equally elegant motor with just one moving part: the ball. The only other active moving part of the robot is the body itself.        The spherical induction motor (SIM) invented by Hollis, a research professor in Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, and Masaaki Kumagai, a professor of engineering at Tohoku Gakuin University in Tagajo, Japan, eliminates the mechanical drive systems that each used on previous ballbots. Because of this extreme mechanical simplicity, SIMbot requires less routine maintenance and is less likely to suffer mechanical failures.    Cont'd...

Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE Competition

The $7 Million Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE is a global competition challenging teams to advance deep-sea technologies for autonomous, fast and high-resolution ocean exploration.

Cartoners, Case Packers, and Palletizers for Track and Trace Serialization of Pharmaceutical Packaging Lines

By integrating OEM serialization systems with packaging machinery, pharmaceutical manufacturers can secure their supply line from counterfeiting and meet current and future pedigree requirements.

Special Tradeshow Coverage for PACK Expo International

PACK Expo will be held from November 6th - 9th in Chicago, Illinois. This RoboticsTomorrow.com Special Tradeshow report aims to bring you news, articles and products from this years event.

Reviving Japan's Dairy Industry, One Milking Robot at a Time

Aya Takada for Bloomberg:  Jin Kawaguchiya gave up a career in finance to help revive Japan’s ailing dairy industry -- one robot at a time. In a country that relies increasingly on imported foods like cheese and butter, Japan’s milk output tumbled over two decades, touching a 30-year low in 2014. Costs rose faster than prices as the economy stagnated, eroding profit, and aging farmers quit the business because they couldn’t find enough young people willing to take on the hard labor of tending to cows every day. But technology is altering that dynamic. On the northern island of Hokkaido, Japan’s top dairy-producing region, Kawaguchiya transformed the 20-cow farm he inherited from his father-in-law 16 years ago into Asia’s largest automated milking factory. Robots extract the white fluid from 360 cows three times a day and make sure the animals are fed and healthy. The machines even gather up poop and deposits it in a furnace that generates electricity.   Cont'd...

Discrete Manufacturers: Special Considerations for Robotics and Demand-Driven Supply Chain Solutions

Misalignment with suppliers is often caused by existing replenishment policies such as min/max order policy.

Could the future of pizza be in the hands of robots?

CARTER EVANS for CBS:   In this emerging age of drone deliveries, anddriverless cars​, technology now brings us -- robo-pizza.  Silicon Valley is at the forefront of reinventing the pie. The kitchen at Zume Pizza is where technology and culinary arts collide. Humans and robots work side-by-side at Zume Pizza in Mountain View, California. Veteran restaurateur Julia Collins founded the delivery-only pizza company with Alex Garden, the former president of online gaming company, Zynga. “I saw an opportunity to go after the $40 billion domestic delivery pizza market,” Garden said.   Cont'd...

Deep-Diving Robots Zap, Kill Invasive Lionfish

Mindy Weisberger for Live Science:  The robotics company iRobot, known for creating the autonomous and endearing Roomba vacuums, is taking steps to make a clean sweep of lionfish in the coastal waters of the Atlantic Ocean, with a robot designed to target and dispatch the invasive fish. A diving robot will enable individuals on the ocean surface to remotely zap and kill lionfish with electrical charges. The effort is meant to help curb the fast-growing populations of these voracious predators, which are recognized by environmental officials as a serious threat to marine ecosystems in the western Atlantic. The initiative to launch the lionfish-targeting robot is called Robots in Service of the Environment (RISE) and represents an iRobot partnership with organizations and volunteer experts in the fields of robotics, engineering and conservation.   Cont'd...

IMTS 2016 - Takeaways

Many of the OEMs were showing how their smart products and processes were driving new business models like servitization (manufacturing firms developing the capabilities to provide services and solutions that supplement their traditional product offerings) and new "power-by-the-hour" offerings.

Records 2401 to 2415 of 3609

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Featured Product

The piCOBOT Electric vacuum generator

The piCOBOT Electric vacuum generator

Fully electric, slim design and absence of air-tubing and cabling. The new piCOBOT® Electric heads towards another success for Piab's piCOBOT® program. A secondary effect of these achievements is the absence of entangling air tubing and cabling. It simplifies the installation, and as the new piCOBOT® Electric only needs a single connection on the cobot arm, the clean set-up allows a completely unrestricted movement. The new piCOBOT® Electric package will contain plug & play software to fit UR e-series cobots, but many other useful adaptations will be introduced in the coming year