One of the main issues in the recent strike against General Motors revolved around the increasing electrification of automobiles. The shift to electric- and hybrid-powered vehicles is expected to radically alter the shape of the auto industry in the decade ahead. It will also change the look of assembly lines.

The automotive industry is at the threshold of a disruption not seen since the Brass Era of the 1900s. Electric vehicles, connectivity, mobility-as-a-service, and autonomous vehicles promise to change the future of transportation in the same way that the "horseless carriage" did a century ago.

Whenever the 1920s are discussed in documentaries, they are first referred to as roaring and then as depressing. Too often, too little attention is paid to what happened in between these two extremes.

Recently, I received an e-mail from a U.S. electrical products company warning me that, on Oct. 15, the tariff on power supplies and power cords imported to the U.S. from China would increase from 25 percent to 30 percent.

Vehicles have become increasingly electrical over the years. This is not just power electronics, but also sensor data, communications and many other coordinated electrical signals. For aircraft or commercial vehicles, wire harnesses can be even more complex with hundreds of interconnection points.

Drones have come a long way in a fairly short time, commercially speaking. In less than 20 years, these unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have gone from being used by the CIA to attack the Taliban in Afghanistan, to soon being used by Amazon to deliver a wide range of packages to homes.

Over the last 26 years, since the founding of CAMI Research Inc., customers and friends have asked why the company would focus its efforts on such a mundane, low-tech, and uninteresting device as a cable tester, particularly since a variety of such devices already existed.

Lower limb prosthetics have been around for more than 200 years. But, it's only in the last 40 years or so that they've progressed to the point of accurately mimicking the human body.

Lightweighting is one of the biggest challenges facing manufacturers today in the automotive, aerospace, maritime and rail industries. The push for new materials is forcing engineers in these industries to explore cost-effective alternatives and develop new assembly processes.

There's nothing quite like a multistation automated assembly system. Watching robots, actuators and indexers go about their carefully choreographed routines with little or no human intervention can seem nothing short of miraculous.