Robotics & Automation News

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Amsterdam to have new 3D printed stainless steel bridge

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Additive manufacturing company MX3D is 3D printing stainless steel bridge to cross one of the oldest and most famous canals in the centre of Amsterdam, the Oudezijds Achterburgwal.

Gemeente Amsterdam is MX3D’s collaborative bridge building department’s first customer.

The company equips typical industrial robots with purpose-built tools and develops the software to control them. The approach allows the company to 3D print strong, complex and graceful structures out of metal.

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Emerson introduces controller for renewable power and microgrid markets

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Emerson, a global technology and engineering company, has introduced automation technology for utilities and independent power producers that rely more and more on diverse renewable energy sources and that serve the fast-growing microgrid market.

Its new, modular Ovation OCC100 controller manages the flow of energy from various sources to ensure continuous, reliable generation for these emerging industries. This small footprint, scalable technology is also well-suited to critical water and wastewater applications.

With renewable electricity capacity expected to expand by over 920 gigawatts – an increase of 43 percent – to 2022, according to a 2017 International Energy Agency report, the OCC100 controller is particularly attractive to power generators with growing and diverse renewable generation portfolios (including hydro, solar and wind) and microgrids that rely on a variety of distributed energy resources.

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C3-XPO robot reduces on-site security incidents to ‘zero’

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XPO Logistics, a global provider of transport and logistics solutions, says its security robot program, launched in October 2017, has reduced incidents at its Atlanta, USA, logistics facility to zero in the first six months.

The autonomous security robot, named C3-XPO, monitors the car park and exterior of the site 24 hours a day.

XPO contracted robotics manufacturer Knightscope, Inc. to deploy a solution that provides a physical presence and interprets data in real time. In addition to eliminating car park incidents, C3-XPO has saved more than $125,000 in costs associated with six months of traditional security services.

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Festo to show bionic and future concepts at Hannover

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From 23rd to 27th April 2018, Festo will be exhibiting new future and bionic concepts as well as further product innovations for factory and process automation at its main booth in Hannover Messe, with the stations “Learn, Build, Operate, Inspire”.

Festo will present a self-learning workplace for human-robot collaboration, the digital customer journey from “Learn”, “Build” and “Operate” to “Inspire”, the fusion of hardware and software in the context of digitalisation and further bionic and future concepts.

The networking of humans, machinery and IT is shaping tomorrow’s production. Not only production plants are now increasingly automated: even the components themselves are becoming more intelligent and are being networked to an increasing extent.

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Cyberdyne and Sumitomo install robot office cleaners

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Cyberdyne and Sumitomo Corporation have agreed to work together to automate and streamline office building cleaning, signing a memorandum of understanding on March 26, 2018.

Sumitomo Corporation plans to operate Cyberdyne’s Cleaning Robot CL02 in office buildings owned by subsidiary companies of Sumitomo Corporation.

In 2001, Sumitomo Corporation installed a cleaning robot system at its headquarters in Harumi Triton Square, Tokyo, where it is still in use today.

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Siemens uses additive manufacturing to produce gas turbines

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Siemens says that additive manufacturing has the potential to become a new key technology, opening up new attractive prospects in the manufacture of gas turbines. The company has been investing in this technology right from its inception, and is now driving the industrialization and commercialization of these processes.

Additive manufacturing is a process that builds parts layer-by-layer from sliced CAD models to form solid objects, which enables highly precise solutions to be formed from powdered high-performance materials.

Siemens is a pioneer in additive manufacturing and already uses the technology for rapid prototyping. The company is now developing solutions ready for series-production for manufacturing gas turbine burner nozzles and repairing burner heads.

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Denso to integrate two metal parts subsidiaries

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On July 1, 2018, Denso Corporation will integrate the management of two Denso Group companies: Denso Preas and Denso Kiko, both of which manufacture metal press-worked parts.

With the advancement of the electrification of automobiles and automated driving, Denso says it will become even more necessary to develop the press-worked parts required for new technologies and to begin local production in overseas regions where the market is expected to grow.

To develop more competitive press-worked parts, Denso reached the conclusion that the aforementioned companies of the Denso Group, each of which has excellent manufacturing assets, must be integrated to form a core press working company while further strengthening collaboration with Denso.

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Robot density rises globally, South Korea ahead

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The automation of production is accelerating around the world: 74 robot units per 10,000 employees is the new average of global robot density in the manufacturing industries (2015: 66 units). By regions, the average robot density in Europe is 99 units, in the Americas 84 and in Asia 63 units.

The top 10 most automated countries in the world are: South Korea, Singapore, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Denmark, USA, Italy, Belgium and Taiwan, according to the 2017 World Robot Statistics, issued by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR).

“Robot density is an excellent standard for comparison in order to take into account the differences in the automation degree of the manufacturing industry in various countries,” says Junji Tsuda, President of the International Federation of Robotics.

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Teradata and Cisco work on smart cities solution

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Teradata is working with Cisco on a digital transformation solution with a focus on smart cities and communities.

Combining the merits of Cisco’s IoT platform, Cisco Kinetic for Cities, with the Teradata Analytics Platform, the solution will help cities become smarter and more connected by providing a powerful solution for integrated data exchange.

The Cisco platform collects, aggregates and normalises real-time data securely across city networks. Teradata is among the first enterprise data analytics companies to integrate with this platform to provide smart data management, such as analytics, persistent data lifecycle management and data enrichment, that delivers business insights to cities and communities.

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DHL expands e-commerce fulfilment internationally

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DHL Parcel and DHL eCommerce are now offering online retailers a global solution for their e-commerce fulfilment needs with a global fulfilment platform and new fulfilment centers in the UK, Americas and South-east Asia.

Today’s e-commerce market is placing aggressive demands on the retailer to provide fast fulfilment and delivery, and doing so without increasing costs. This is simply not possible for most merchants because they lack capital or the ability to manage the complexity.

DHL has built a new IT platform that provides access to a network of fulfilment centres and is closely integrated with DHL’s shipping capabilities to allow our customers to meet their fulfilment and shipping requirements in a much more efficient fashion.

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