industrial robots News

Robot Invasion Hit a Bump in 2023 as North American Economy Cooled

North American companies ordered about a third fewer robots last year as worries about a slowing economy and higher interest rates made it harder to justify buying the advanced machines, the first hiccup in five years in what has been …

Increasingly Popular Industrial Robots Are Vulnerable to Cyber Attacks, Report Warns

Industrial robots are now being used to assemble everything from airplanes to smartphones, using human-like arms to mechanically repeat the same processes over and over, thousands of times a day with nanometric precision. But according to a new report entitled …

2018 Was Big Year for Robot Employment

U.S. companies installed more robots last year than ever before, as cheaper and more flexible machines put them within reach of businesses of all sizes and in more corners of the economy beyond their traditional foothold in car plants. Shipments …

Making Working with Robots Safe for Humans

Veo Robotics Inc., a startup developing sensor technology that lets industrial robots work safely side-by-side with humans, closed a funding round as it prepares to roll out the product in May. The company raised $15 million late last month, bringing …

Robot Detects Spill on Aisle 3 But Human Cleans It Up

A wheeled robot named Marty is rolling into nearly 500 grocery stores to alert employees if it encounters spilled granola, squashed tomatoes or a broken jar of mayonnaise. But there could be a human watching from behind its cartoonish googly …

How One German Company Is Making Workplace Robots Safer for Humans

Two years ago, a robot crushed a 22-year-old man to death at a Volkswagen AG factory in Germany after the maintenance worker became trapped in an area usually off-bound to humans. While this type of tragedy is still relatively rare, …

Popular Robots Appear Dangerously Easy to Hack, Researchers Say

Some of the most popular industrial and consumer robots are dangerously easy to hack and could be turned into bugging devices or weapons, IOActive Inc. said. The Seattle-based cybersecurity firm found major security flaws in industrial models sold by Universal …

6 Years After Fukushima Disaster, Robots Continue Search for Radioactive Fuel

The latest robot seeking to find the 600 tons of nuclear fuel and debris that melted down six years ago in Japan’s wrecked Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant met its end in less than a day. The scorpion-shaped machine, built by …

Why Robots Replacing Humans at Work Is More Science Fiction Than Fact

Ever since robots emerged from the pages of science-fiction novels into the real world, humans have feared being usurped in the workplace. That worry may be more fictional than scientific. A recent study by the VDMA Robotics and Automation Association …

Cobots: Making It Safe for Humans, Robots to Work Side-by-Side

In June this year a robot crushed a man to death in a Volkswagen factory in Germany. The 22-year-old maintenance worker became trapped between a large robotic arm and a metal plate, in an area usually off-bounds to humans. The …