Robotics & Automation News

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Timken acquires linear motion firm Rollon

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The Timken Company, a specialist in engineered bearings and power transmission products, has reached an agreement with pan-European firm Chequers Capital and IGI Private Equity to acquire Rollon Group.

Rollon specialises in the design and manufacture of linear guides, telescopic rails and linear actuators used in a wide range of industries such as passenger rail, aerospace, packaging and logistics, medical and automation. Rollon sales are expected to be about $140 million for the full year 2018.

Headquartered near Milan, Italy, Rollon has manufacturing operations in Italy, Germany and the United States. Rollon employs approximately 600 people and has an extensive sales and engineering network around the world to serve its global customer base.

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Capacity partners with RightHand Robotics to further automate fulfilment operations

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Capacity LLC, an order fulfilment, e-commerce, and electronic data interchange (EDI) company, has partnered with the robotic piece-picking experts at RightHand Robotics.

The collaboration will integrate the Massachusetts-based company’s RightPick automation system into Capacity’s fulfilment solution offering.

The robotic workcells will be integrated with existing warehouse material handling systems, such as those from Lightning Pick, and will increase the level of automation.

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Timken to acquire precision drive company Cone Drive

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The Timken Company, an engineered bearings and power transmission products firm, has reached an agreement to acquire Cone Drive, a specialist in precision drives used in diverse markets including solar, automation, aerial platforms and food and beverages.

Cone Drive sales are expected to be slightly above $100 million for the full year 2018. It is headquartered in Traverse City, Michigan, U.S., and has manufacturing operations in the United States and China. The company employs approximately 500 people.

The business produces a broad range of highly customisable precision drive products that include Cone Drive and H-Fang branded high-torque worm gears, harmonic solutions and precision slew drives.

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Rethink Robotics signs up new distribution partners

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Rethink Robotics has signed deals with seven new distribution partners throughout the United States, Europe and Asia-Pacific to increase the availability of its smart, collaborative robots.

The company’s Sawyer robot is a smart automation solution to address challenges such as labour shortages and improve efficiencies across industries such as plastics, packaging and co-packing, metal fabrication, electronics and the automotive supply chain.

The new partners will join Rethink’s existing suite of partners to help meet the growing demand for Sawyer in North America, Europe and Asia. Rethink Robotics’ cobot solution includes industry-leading Intera software and the Clicksmart gripper technology, which make it easy to train and deploy.

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Philips and Dutch Rijnstate hospital to build a virtual hospital for connected care

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Royal Philips, a global leader in health technology, and the Dutch Rijnstate Hospital have signed a new 10-year strategic partnership agreement to jointly develop the ‘hospital of the future’.

The new hospital concept  will use the latest monitoring and connected health technologies to expand its delivery of care from the hospital to a regional care network, including the home.

At the heart of this new concept will be a ‘virtual care coordination centre’, an advanced central command hub, from where care providers will remotely monitor the health of patients both inside and outside the hospital.

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ABB wins $150 million order to grid-connect world’s largest offshore wind farm

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ABB has won orders worth over $150 million from Danish energy company, Ørsted (previously Dong Energy), to supply technologies for the grid connection of Hornsea Project Two, slated to be the world’s largest offshore wind farm.

Hornsea Two is a 1,400 megawatt (MW) project under construction in the North Sea about 100 kilometres off the Yorkshire coast. Upon completion, it will be able to deliver enough clean electrical power to meet the needs of more than 1.3 million homes annually.

The additional power supply will support economic growth in the UK’s Humber region, and help the UK meet its target of generating 15 percent of energy needs from renewable sources by 2020.

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Okuma launches new CNC machine with additive manufacturing functions

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Okuma America Corporation is introducing the new MU-8000V Laser EX multitasking CNC machine, combining the latest laser additive technology with subtractive manufacturing capabilities. The machine is said to enable complete part production on one machine.

The MU-8000V Laser EX revolutionizes production by using laser metal deposition (LMD) technology with the ability to cut unique parts of many different sizes and shapes. LMD supplies powder from nozzles and performs laser melting and bonding to parent material.

This allows for various types of materials to be combined and layered in addition to the possibility of three-dimensional fabrication and cladding.

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Spirit AeroSystems uses robots for quality inspection of large aerospace parts

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Spirit AeroSystems is using robotics hardware and software technologies to inspect its composite aerospace components such as fuselages, wings and substructures.

The company is using the new robotic non destructive inspection (NDI) technology at its headquarters location in Wichita, Kansas, US, and plans to use similar technology at its Prestwick, Scotland, facility.

“Typically, inspections for meeting customer requirements have been done by large, fixed systems that are difficult to adapt to new applications,” said Dan Caughran, Spirit vice president, Global Quality.

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J.D. Power and Harman partner on data for connected driving

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J.D. Power and Harman have announced an alliance that aims to significantly influence the automotive industry’s use of vehicle data to enrich customer experience, solve problems more effectively and help identify what consumers want from their increasingly automated vehicles.

Integrating customer insights with connected car data to provide original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) with more accurate feedback from owners is the shared goal of J.D. Power, a consumer insights firm, and Harman International, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

With the rapid emergence of new technology in the automotive industry, understanding driver behaviour and preferences within the vehicle is crucial for automakers.

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Simbe Robotics adds RFID and machine learning capabilities to Tally robot

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Simbe Robotics has integrated Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Machine Learning technology to enable its autonomous inventory robot, Tally, to capture in-store data on all RFID-tagged merchandise, from apparel to electronics, sporting goods to home decor.

In addition to its pre-existing computer vision abilities, Tally now captures over 700 RFID product tags per second with higher than 99% accuracy.

This frees shop workers from using handheld scanning devices and provides retailers with real-time insight into product availability and placement.

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