Exploring Top Trends in Industrial Automation.

The Landscape of Industrial Automation.

Industrial automation has become a major player in all aspects of the industry in the last decade thanks to an increasingly international marketplace and the rise of eCommerce. Businesses across the world have had to react promptly, reassessing and adapting their working practices, to keep up with changing methods of working and keep up with the demand for greater production.

Declared a Fourth Industrial Revolution, robotics and wider automation are making many production processes more efficient, whilst freeing up human workers for more creative roles. This flourishing new revolution is streamlining work processes whilst also upskilling candidates across the market, creating a more productive and skilful work environment.

Industrial Automation Top Trends to Watch.

Within the market, certain developing trends have proven particularly central in the industrial automation space. Exploring the trajectory of these trends and how certain companies are exploiting them can tell us a lot about the future of industrial automation, and help us further understand the true potential of the sector. Let’s take a look.

Advancements in automation, in particular digitalisation and digital transformation, have opened many doors in the sector. The combination of automation and digitisation has created the optimum space for several companies to develop their offering - including the robotics, sensory and machine vision component production, and motion control component product spaces.

READY Robotics makes the most of digitisation possibilities with software to simplify automation robotics. Their Forge/OS platform is a powerful brand agnostic operating system, enabling operators to run robotic systems, manage changeovers, a program for new parts, and even recover a system in full. With programming available via visual flowchart as well as traditional coding and configuration with endless robotics brands, Forge/OS is open and accessible for users across the industry.

Meanwhile, Agile Robots - a German AI start-up - are utilising digitalisation across sensory and motion control spaces to offer full-body force sensitivity and world-leading vision intelligence for industrial robotics. Learning-based vision technology gives real-time feedback to your robotic force, while reinforcement learning algorithms and force feedback technology allow robots to learn from planned trajectories, sense the physical world around them, and adjust their actions accordingly.

Adaptive Support: Predictive Maintenance and Cyber Security.

When it comes to proactive, adaptive industrial automation support, predictive maintenance and reactive security are flourishing.

Synapticon offers a range of safety products to ensure a minimised need for maintenance, including the SOMANET Safe Motion. The SOMANET Safe Motion offers a broad range of SIL3 PLe certified safety features, as well as a reliable Fail Safe over EtherCAT (FSoE), that fits all SOMANET servo drives. Meanwhile, the robot control tower from WAKU Robotics allows comprehensive performance visualisation and real-time alerting and error analysis to ensure maintenance is booked in as soon as possible.  

When it comes to cyber security, Arculus is an established range of impressive storage and security solutions. Developed by the team at CompoSecure, this crypto security and cold storage wallet solution is making it simpler, safer, and more secure for all to make use of digitised assets in online shopping and automated processing. What’s more, their cold storage offer allows advanced digital storage for industrial automation teams and robotics spaces.  

As the industrial automation space grows, the associated sectors that offer adaptive support can expect to see parallel growth - and the likes of these companies and their peers are forging strong roots for an established future. 

Welcoming Growth In Industrial Automation.

There is a great wealth of companies making themselves known in industrial automation and related spaces, and they look set to work with innovation and inspiration to help hone the sector into an exciting and productive space to be in the coming years.  

From digitalisation and intelligent automation to predictive maintenance and digital storage and security, the future of industrial automation lies in recognising and collaborating with parallel industries, exploiting new technologies, and developing a sector that is built for ultimate productivity and customer satisfaction.

Fancy chatting about the future of additive manufacturing in some more detail with me? Drop me an email at joe.michie@industrial-cm.com or connect with me on LinkedIn!

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