Robotics Assembly

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Traditional solar panel installations require expensive and time-consuming assembly of custom mounting systems on a roof, which can ultimately slow adoption.

ROCHESTER HILLS, MI—Fanuc, one of the world’s largest makers of industrial robots, is working with Nvidia, a Silicon Valley chipmaker that specializes in artificial intelligence, to add learning capabilities to its products.

Laser welding is one of the newest technologies for joining thermoplastic parts. This noncontact process has many advantages. It’s fast and precise, and it doesn’t generate flash or particulates.

BROUGHTON, UK—Like a cartoon space alien with a dome-like skull, an Airbus Beluga transport plane arriving from Madrid drops from the sky above this village 200 miles northwest of London and taxis to a stop with its front end tucked inside a large building off the runway. Its bulbous forehead pops open to disgorge massive wing panels—98 feet long and 20 feet wide—that will soon be assembled by sophisticated robots and about 800 people into the largest carbon-fiber composite wings now built for commercial aviation.

Manufacturers with long histories and famous founders (e.g., John Deere, Henry Ford, F.L. Maytag) are numerous throughout the world.

PETROLIA, CA—Victor Scheinman, the Stanford engineering professor whose electrically powered, computer-controlled robot would become the Programmable Universal Machine for Assembly (PUMA) robot, has died at age 73.

Welding of one sort or another has been the No. 1 application for industrial robots almost since the technology was invented.

Robots are used in many large hospitals to deliver supplies and assist doctors with delicate surgical procedures. In the future, robotic surgery will become the routine rather than the exception.

In every manufacturing industry, tradition is becoming less important. Companies no longer assume that what worked in the past will be enough to keep and gain customers. Instead, they look to the latest technology to improve manufacturing processes, optimize product quality and expand their customer base.