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.

Refrigerators are one of the only appliances found in nearly every type of home, whether it's an apartment in suburban Atlanta, a high-rise condominium in downtown Chicago, a beach house in Hawaii or a trailer in Texas. The humble refrigerator is also the hardest working household appliance. Day and night, it's constantly running to keep all types of food and beverages cool, fresh or frozen.

FRANKFURT,Germany—The latest World Robotics report presented by the International Federation of Robotics shows an annual global sales value of $16.5 billion dollars in 2018, a new record.

Often, hands-on experience is the best way to prepare college students for life in the real world. That's the goal of the Omron Senior Design and Robotics Laboratory at the University of Houston.

Automated assembly is becoming increasingly common, even for small manufacturing companies. Robotic assemblers improve productivity and boost output while ensuring that results are more consistent.

Load cells and sensors used with presses measure several key variables, such as ram force, distance and time, and help ensure they stay within allowable tolerances.

Robotics and wrestling have a lot in common. Flexibility and reach are important to both. Robots and wrestlers also have numerous categories that are based on different weight and payload capacities.

In my first postcollege job, I was a manufacturing engineer for Cummins Engine Co. in Columbus, IN. Two weeks into the job, my boss came to me with a project to purchase an industrial wash system, and I leaped at the opportunity. It was a disaster.

When manufacturing engineers are tasked with automating a process that is currently done manually, their main question for an automation supplier is, "Have you ever automated this specific process before?"