Robotics & Automation News

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Osram acquires US ‘smart grow’ lighting firm

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Lighting giant Osram is acquiring Fluence Bioengineering, Inc. of Austin, Texas. The company specialises in LED-based horticultural systems, using Osram LED chips, for a wide variety of applications including vertical farming, especially in urban areas.

Potential crops range from salad greens and herbs to medicinal plants. Fluence was founded in 2013, has approximately 95 employees and its 2017 sales were in the mid-double-digit millions of dollars (USD).

LED-based solutions from Fluence can increase harvests up to 25 percent, reducing energy costs by as much as 50 percent and, through the targeted use of light, improving the quality and nutritional content of plants.

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Audi plans to sell 800,000 electrified cars in 2025

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Audi aims to sell approximately 800,000 fully electric cars and plug-in hybrids in the year 2025. The updated strategy will enable about every third customer to decide in favour of an e-model by the middle of the next decade.

There will be an electrified variant in each model series by then – most of them are to be fully electric, with a smaller proportion as plug-in hybrids.

“Our ambition has always been and will continue to be Vorsprung durch Technik,” says Rupert Stadler, Chairman of the Board of Management of AUDI AG.

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Rethink Robotics’ Sawyer bridges workforce gaps at Cox Container

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Cox Container, LLC, a plastics blow moulding manufacturer, has deployed Rethink Robotics‘ Sawyer robot at its Troy, Alabama, USA, facility to address challenges associated with labour shortages and offering high quality jobs to its workers.

Cox Container, LLC, currently operates several blow molders, 24 hours per day in its 73,000 sq. ft. manufacturing facility.

Cox Container accommodates custom orders, so adaptability from both human workers and machines is a critical need as the company shifts between high-volume, low-mix and low-volume, high-mix models.

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South Korea tops ‘Automation Readiness Index’

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South Korea, Germany and Singapore are the world’s top-ranked nations in their preparations for smoothly integrating intelligent automation into their economies, according to an index and report released today by ABB and The Economist Intelligence Unit.

The report “The Automation Readiness Index (ARI): Who Is Ready for the Coming Wave of Innovation?” finds that even the best-prepared countries must develop even more effective education policies and training programs, as well as place a new emphasis on continual learning over the course of a career.

Those policies and programs, the report recommends, must ensure that the rapid adoption of automation technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) will not leave people unprepared for the new, more human-oriented jobs that will be needed as robots and algorithms take on more of the routine tasks that can be and will be automated.

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General Motors uses AI-based generative design technology to reduce vehicle weight

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General Motors is using new, advanced software design technology to introduce the next generation of vehicle lightweighting. The technology is key to developing efficient and lighter alternative propulsion and zero emission vehicles.

GM is the first automaker in North America to use new generative design software technology from software company Autodesk.

It uses cloud computing and AI-based algorithms to rapidly explore multiple permutations of a part design, generating hundreds of high-performance, often organic-looking geometric design options based on goals and parameters set by the user, such as weight, strength, material choice, fabrication method, and more. The user then determines the best part design option.

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Mercedes-Benz to launch all-electric car in 2019

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Mercedes-Benz will launch the EQC, the first all-electric Mercedes-Benz model from the new product and technology brand EQ, in 2019.

Between January and March, prototypes of the new model series completed tough winter testing in northern Sweden.

The next waystations on the road to series production are more suspension/powertrain tests as well as integrated complete-vehicle high-temperature testing in southern Europe.

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Apple partners on carbon-free aluminium smelting method

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Aluminium giants Alcoa Corporation and Rio Tinto Aluminium have announced a joint venture to commercialise patented technology that eliminates direct greenhouse gas emissions from the traditional smelting process, a key step in aluminium production.

This is a revolutionary advancement in the manufacturing of one of the world’s most widely used metals.

Apple helped accelerate the development of this technology has partnered with both aluminium companies, and the Governments of Canada and Quebec, to collectively invest a combined $144 million to future research and development.

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Volvo Cars aims for 50 per cent of sales to be electric by 2025

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Volvo Cars aims for fully electric cars to make up 50 per cent of its sales by 2025, the company has announced.

The announcement builds on Volvo Cars’ 2017 industry-first announcement that all new models released from 2019 will be available as either a mild hybrid, plug-in hybrid or battery electric vehicle.

The company’s strategy to generate half of its sales from electric cars by 2025 positions it as a powerful player in China, the world’s leading market for electrified cars.

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Drishti raises $10 million to ‘digitise’ factory workers

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Even after decades of advancement in robotics and automation, humans are still the biggest contributors to value creation in manufacturing.

Yet, the techniques to measure human activities in the factory are 100 years old—dating back to the time of Henry Ford—and impossible to perform at scale.

Humans in the plant are effectively invisible to analytics. Major manufacturing business decisions are based on incomplete and unreliable data.

[Read more…] about Drishti raises $10 million to ‘digitise’ factory workers

ABB launches first 350 kW high power car charger

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ABB has launched its newest electric vehicle (EV) charging solution, the Terra HP, the first 350 kW product on the market. Charging time for a range of 200 km is just eight minutes, claims the company.

Ideally suited for use at motorway service and petrol stations, Terra HP’s ultra-high current has the capacity to charge both 400 V and 800 V cars at full power.

The addition of Dynamic DC power sharing technology, allows a two-power cabinet charging system to charge a couple of EVs simultaneously, with up to 350 kW, while dynamically optimizing the available grid connection and the power delivery to the two vehicles.

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