Automate 2024 is now in the rear-view mirror, but the technology trends illustrated by the demos at the show will continue to influence the industry throughout the year, and beyond. Three major trends rose to the surface (among others):
Cobots are now being configured for specific duties, much like their industrial counterparts.
Collaborations between specialists for comprehensive solutions allow faster and more effective progress.
Energy monitoring is becoming critical for cost reduction and less grid reliance.
Cobots With Specific Jobs
Since cobots first hit the scene, the designs have largely been general-purpose construction, differing only by the payload and reach of the various arms. However, several examples stood out this year as designs that break the mold, sporting configurations that cater to a single application.
FANUC’s CRX-10iA/L Paint Cobot
A painting robot needs to have the ability to be easily programmed to follow a path, not just point-to-point linear motion. FANUC’s CRX-10iA Paint is a bot designed with an easier grip handle for programming and is fitted with an air connection in the base to allow positive pressure inside the linkages, removing the risk of paint ingress and explosion.
Doosan’s Prime P3020 Palletizer
What could be better than a 6-axis cobot? How about a 5-axis cobot? Yes, you’re reading this correctly: removing an axis can result in increased performance and payload. For a general-purpose bot, 6 axes might be the ideal, but when the task is palletizing, all work is along the horizontal plane. Removing an axis results in easier kinematic performance and reduces the weight of the arm, allowing a longer reach with a heavier payload.
Collaboration Instead of Competition
Everyone is good at something. Some people are good at a lot of things. But for most of us, expertise is found only in a limited number of topics, while we rely on the experience of others to solve the rest of our challenges. For companies, this means that we don’t always need to be the ones supplying every component of the automation process. Many manufacturers are finding value in partnering with other SMEs to provide entire solutions to customers, and they don’t always need to invest the time and R&D cost to figure out the entire problem by themselves.
NVIDIA and Teradyne (UR/MiR)
NVIDIA has been in many headlines for numerous recent partnerships, increasing a foothold in the industrial AI and metaverse sectors. While, granted, these topics are still the center of marketing language for many, there are a lot of examples of companies using NVIDIA to augment AI capabilities. Universal Robots (UR) demonstrated an increased path planning ability for part inspection, resulting in 50-80x faster time to plan a motion path.
Phoenix Contact, CESMII, and SORBA AI
AI. These days, it seems like all we hear about is how easy it is to integrate AI into nearly every part of every process, but at the same time, it always seems to require a vast amount of knowledge to understand and implement. In a demonstration of energy monitoring for predictive maintenance and sustainability, a PLCNext from Phoenix Contact was connected to CESMII’s Smart Manufacturing (SM) architecture, and was able to display actionable AI-trained insights and data using SORBA’s AI data engine.
Energy Monitoring
Energy is expensive, difficult to monitor and evaluate, and it can be unreliable. Energy monitoring and control is becoming a big topic, just as alternate energy production has been a major talking point for power industry for years.
SEW-EURODRIVE
When power is unreliable, that means it may be subject to brief outages, spikes, or dips. While many of us may not notice these problems in our normal life, heavy machines will experience harmful effects. SEW-EURODRIVE demonstrated a centralized motor drive bank, where all drive outputs are fed from one AC-DC bus voltage. Capacitors regulate and filter the power, and can even provide temporary power to eliminate quick shutdowns.
WAGO
Commitment to control and energy sustainability, WAGO has introduced the Distributed Energy Resources (DER) controller. This device augments the extensive controller (PLC) catalog already offered by WAGO, but is designed to meet the needs outlined in IEEE 1547, controlling and monitoring the voltage, frequency, and power (reactive vs. true) between the grid and the operator. WAGO displayed a number of PLC, power, and I/O solutions in the booth at Automate, some of which are show above.
Check out even more exciting pictures from Automate 2024!
Teledyne FLIR demonstrates a very high-speed camera system: individual water droplets in a steady stream
New communication modules for Arduino’s Opta PLC
SensoPart’s ObjectAI vision system
Siemens’ new updated S7-1200 PLC
CODESYS can allow communication over many protocols to various control system elements at the same time
