When something in your home breaks you have a couple of options. You can either toss it and get a new one, or you can have it repaired. If you’re handy, you have a third option of repairing it yourself. Some things can be beyond even professional repair, but more often than not you can… Read more »

IoT is present in our homes, in our factories, and on our wrists, but IoT technologies are nowhere near reaching their potential. The technology is improving rapidly, and new devices are connected every day. With advancing IoT technology, and the increasing importance of IoT in our lives, concerns over cyber security become more significant. How… Read more »

According to the Brewer’s Association, overall beer sales in the United States reached $105.9 billion last year. In other words, Americans enjoy beer. That being said, we don’t normally think of beer as a high-tech operation. How much technology could possibly go into putting suds into bottles and cans, after all? While micro breweries maintain… Read more »

There was a time when you could find robots in just one of two places. If robots weren’t working feverishly in factories, they were hopping from planet to planet in the realm of science fiction. Today, most of the actual robots are still found in the manufacturing industry. The global market for industrial robots, including… Read more »

Manufacturing has long been the backbone of the U.S. economy. A healthy manufacturing sector lends itself to a healthy national economy. Of course, unemployment in manufacturing has been on the rise for some time. There’s no denying the disappearance of manufacturing jobs, but the reason for the loss of jobs is often debated. Some credit… Read more »

Tomorrow is election day. Whether you’re a die-hard Democrat, a straight-ticket Republican, or you’re supporting a third party candidate this year, tomorrow is your chance to have a say in who our president will be for the next 4 years. This has arguably been the strangest and most interesting election cycle in the history of… Read more »

Machines follow instructions. They’re reliable, predictable, and precise, which is why they’re perfect for manufacturing and industrial applications. When you tell an industrial machine to carry out a sequence it does so unquestioningly until you tell it to stop, until it loses power, or until something breaks. When you boot up your industrial motion control… Read more »

We’re seeing a big push for automation in the United States. Manufacturing increasingly relies on industrial motion control systems and less on human workers. We’re seeing a growing number of automated vehicles on U.S. roads. Just recently, Uber rolled out automated transportation services in Pittsburgh. We’re replacing cashiers with self-checkouts, servers with tablets, and pizza… Read more »

The octopus is an incredible creature – powerful, dexterous, and resilient. Oh, and it’s squishy, too. That’s why the octopus is a source of inspiration for soft robotics. Soft robotics is bringing all kinds of fascinating new technologies to the world of automation. Everything that we’ve known about robots and machinery is being challenged and… Read more »

It’s remarkable how quickly robotics, artificial intelligence, and other forms of automation are advancing. Automation can do more than ever before, and in more fields than many thought possible. Agriculture, manufacturing, service industries, construction, and even restaurants are all implementing automation. While some view this as a good thing, others find an increase in automation… Read more »