There was no shortage of robotics suppliers at The ASSEMBLY Show last October.

ANN ARBOR, MI—Fueled by strong demand from manufacturing companies in all sectors, the North American robotics industry is off to its fastest start ever in 2014, according to the Robotic Industries Association.

Once found mostly in high-volume manufacturing environments, robots are now being used in smaller organizations, and in a wider variety of applications.  

MONTREAL—Canadian researchers have invented a double-SCARA parallel robot that is more rigid and has a larger work envelope than a standard SCARA.

When specifying a motion control system for, say, a pick-and-place application on an automated assembly line, engineers have two choices.

LETCHWORTH, UK—Engineers at systems integrator Alphr Technology have developed a vision-guided robotic automation system to assemble plastic spigots.