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.

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.

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.

The fundamental start of any project is a scope of work document, which specifies what we want the project to achieve. The project scope may start out broadly described based upon business objectives, but it will become increasingly detailed over time.

Since 2016, China has been the world's largest industrial robot market. Reports from the International Federation of Robots show that foreign robot makers sold nearly 90,000 units to Chinese manufacturers that year and more than 103,000 robots in 2017

Factories of the future will feature advanced technology, such as additive manufacturing, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, data analytics and digital twins. While many manufacturers are still ramping up their Industry 4.0 initiatives, several assembly plants are already at the forefront. They are embracing the Fourth Industrial Revolution and reaping the benefits.

Lights-out automation has been a dream of engineers for more than 200 years. The goal is to push a button and let machines work unattended.

Robots and other automation technologies have greatly increased productivity in today's factories. However, they still have one major limitation: They require people to tell them what to do.

Manufacturing in the 19th century was driven by steam. In the 20th century, it was electricity. Today, manufacturing is driven by data.

By now, we've all heard the hype: The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) will fundamentally change manufacturing and offer a cornucopia of benefits, including increased efficiency, higher quality and more responsive supply chains.