Robert Brooks, Omron Europe’s industry manager for food and beverage, discusses how smart, robot-assisted production and packaging will maximise profitability. A challenge accelerated by the Coronavirus pandemic has seen producers having to juggle between longer term range proliferation centred on consumer demands, and range reduction caused by retailers’ and consumers’ rapidly changing buying habits. This […]
Interact Analysis has produced a new report on the mobile robot market, forecasting that revenues will grow by nearly a quarter in 2020, despite the chaos being felt around the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Revenues are set to reach $2.4bn this year and will surge by a further 50% in 2021 as the […]
Omron has announced the launch of the HD-1500, the strongest and newest addition to the company’s series of mobile robots. The new HD-1500 boasts a heavy payload capacity of up to 1500kg. It is ideal for today’s factories, where autonomous material handling solutions need to manage more demanding industrial automation tasks, along with implementing new […]
Being an innovative manufacturer of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), Agilox directs most of its effort into developing one of the most unique robotic material handling features on the market – completely decentralised autonomy. Agilox Intelligent Guided Vehicles (IGVs) are completely independent, self-controlled, and intelligently designed to handle failover, recovery, and deadlock prevention perfectly. Swarm Intelligence […]
RARUK Automation is launching a major innovation that will enhance operations for all those looking to automate the internal transportation of goods. The new MiR250 autonomous mobile robot (AMR) is an agile, rapid-charging, cost-effective means of transporting payloads of up 250kg around premises such as factories, warehouses and healthcare facilities – essentially any business seeking […]
Denmark’s Minister of Industry, Business and Financial Affairs, Simon Kollerup, has unveiled what will become the new home of Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR) and Universal Robots (UR), the two flagships in the thriving Danish robotics industry. The companies will share 32,000 m2 (334,000 square feet) in a new “cobot hub” in the city of Odense, […]
Entire aircraft wing assemblies could be transported by intelligent, autonomous robots at the vast Airbus production facility in North Wales following a collaborative research project with engineers at the AMRC’s Integrated Manufacturing Group. The ambitious project began by developing safe, automated means of delivering tooling supplies internally within the Airbus factory at Broughton in Wales, […]
An autonomously guided vehicle (AGV) equipped with a robot arm has been developed by Mitsubishi Electric and Mirage, making it possible to deploy the same robot at multiple workstations. The system has been designed to give unprecedented flexibility to assembly lines and boost plant productivity. An articulated arm robot fixed in a static position can […]
Applied Automation has announced that it is now an official UK distributor of products from OptoForce, On Robot and EasyRobotics. These companies produce products that work with the Universal Robots collaborative robot arms, which Applied Automation is an existing UK ‘preferred partner’. The sale of collaborative robots has seen tremendous growth in the last few […]
RBTX DOBOT partner launch hailed a success
igus UK marks a major milestone in accessible automation with the successful launch of its RBTX partnership with DOBOT Robotics. The event brought together engineers, system integrators, manufacturers and automation specialists to explore how flexible robotic solutions can be deployed quickly and cost-effectively, without the complexity traditionally associated with industrial automation. Live demonstrations showcased collaborative […]
What role does AI play in art?
The River of Light festival in Liverpool showcased ‘Face Value’, a captivating installation co-created by PhD student Emma Brass from the University of Liverpool and Venya Krutikov, co-founder of The Kazimier and Invisible Wind Factory. Blending artificial intelligence, robotics, and visual art, Face Value invites visitors to confront how technology perceives and redefines reality. The […]
Application phase for 10th vector award is now open
The application phase of the igus vector award 2026 has begun. Now in its tenth year, a joint initiative is honouring designers worldwide who use high-performance plastic energy chains to create cable guides that set new technological standards, with winners to receive up to 5,000 euros in prize money. The vector award has gained international […]
Cobot completes one millionth PCB quality check
Hanover Displays, a UK-based manufacturer of passenger information systems for the public transport sector, has reached a major manufacturing milestone: the completion of its 1,000,000th automated quality test of printed circuit boards (PCBs) using Techman collaborative robots from LG Motion. The automation programme began in 2018, when Hanover introduced its first collaborative robot to improve […]
UR and Scale AI launch imitation learning system
Universal Robots (UR) unveiled the UR AI Trainer at GTC 2026 in Silicon Valley. Developed in collaboration with Scale AI, the AI Trainer marks a tectonic shift as robots move from pre-programmed applications to fully AI-driven tasks. These systems are powered by robust data generated in AI training cells where robots imitate humans. “Our customers, ranging from […]
The beverage palletising shift is accelerating
Martin Ray Winery in Napa Valley has deployed its first lean cobot palletising workcell and achieved a 16-month ROI, with the system installed in just two days. You can find out all about it in a webinar hosted by Robotiq on 19 March. Across Europe and North America, beverage producers, from kombucha and bottled water […]
Customised robotics and automation systems: Astech Projects is an award-winning provider of advanced automated solutions. We work with clients worldwide to design and build robotics and automation systems that meet
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Universal adaptive gripper for faster, gentler picking
Festo has introduced the HPSX Universal Adaptive Gripper, a pneumatic soft gripper engineered to improve speed, hygiene and flexibility in demanding food, pharmaceutical and cosmetics applications. Combining robust design, food-safe materials and adaptive silicone fingers, the HPSX directly addresses long-standing automation challenges where rapid, precise and gentle product handling is essential. “In developing the HPSX, […]
The beverage palletising shift is accelerating
Martin Ray Winery in Napa Valley has deployed its first lean cobot palletising workcell and achieved a 16-month ROI, with the system installed in just two days. You can find out all about it in a webinar hosted by Robotiq on 19 March. Across Europe and North America, beverage producers, from kombucha and bottled water […]
Robotics, vision and AI combine for dairy processes
Automation solutions provider Eberle Automatische Systeme has developed a breakthrough in quality control with a focus on the cheese-ripening process, combining AI with machine vision software from MVTec. The food industry is experiencing a transformative shift in quality control, due in part to advances in artificial intelligence (AI). When combined with rule-based machine vision, AI […]
Embracing automation and robots in industry
The future lies in the innovation of industry; efficiency and automation are the key buzzwords of 2020 as Covid-19 pressure drives businesses to seek new and unique ways to achieve more with less, and counter those slimming margins. Within warehousing, logistics and picking and packing for e-commerce for example, there’s been a rapid uptake over […]