Mobile and collaborative robots, virtual assembly lines, digital manufacturing. It’s not science fiction, but the fourth industrial revolution. Whether it’s Germany’s Industry 4.0, Made in China 2025, or France’s Creative Industry, the goal is the same—build tomorrow’s factory. The nature of international competition...
Mitsubishi Electric has presented a spectrum of integrated automation components and services, described as an “e factory” for the journey toward Industry 4.0. Unveiled at the SPS IPC Drives Expo 2016, it was developed to help companies explore new solutions for the automation and digitalization of industrial...
Rockwell Automation is in the midst of a global deployment of its smart manufacturing systems. The company shared insight into the two first examples of what it calls the Connected Enterprise, in Ohio and Mexico.
A New Architecture in Mexico
In 2007, Rockwell Automation began building two greenfield plants in...
Humanoid factory hand workerbot3 from pi4_robotics scooped up second place in the Robotics Awards at Hannover Messe this year.
pi4_robotics GmbH, which manufactures machine vision systems, automatic inspection systems and robots, designed a cobot that can operate in varied settings, carrying out production operations,...
The factory of the future is fast becoming a reality. This is nowhere more obvious than in Germany. The rise of automated plants is bringing Industry 4.0 to the forefront of production, with companies like Festo leading the way in automation.
An Intuitive HMI Technology Plant
In Scharnhausen, southeast of Stuttgart,...
Digitization of traditional industries means increasing reliance on alternative input modalities such as voice and gesture control. At SPS, SemVox presented its ODP S3 intelligent speech dialog software that can be used for production, manufacturing and service tasks, among others.
ODP (Ontology-based Dialog Platform)...
Watch our exclusive report. Will magnetic levitation bring about a revolution in the factory of tomorrow?
At SPS, automation manufacturer Festo presented its supraconductivity technology for production lines. Their SupraCarrier could be commercially launched in 5 years for handling and conveying applications. Yet,...
Pioneer in the simplification of programming, Crouzet Automation (now a brand of InnoVista Sensors) presented its em4 at SPS. The device is the first fully-connected remote PLC that allows applications to enter the Internet of Things, while enabling the user to control equipment via smartphone or other mobile devices....
The nonprofit organization PLCopen answers the question of how to bridge the gap between virtual and physical worlds with its PLCopen XML interface—a conversion from the simulation of a complete plant to the application programs for this plant. How does it work? It generates a code, exports and shares it, so that...
Efficient engineering and clear layout are the main advantages of the S-DIAS, the new graphical hardware editor for I/O module control within centralized and decentralized automation systems. The editor is programmed with the object-oriented engineering suite, LASAL, and enables visualization, motion control and the...
