by Gary Mintchell | Dec 15, 2025 | Robots, Sensors, Technology
This news came to me touted as an industry first. Actually, I’ve already written about a similar application. That does not denigrate the accomplishment. It only speaks to marketing. AI has been a part of vision systems as long as I can remember. AI as an automation tool continues to become more powerful and useful. Just go past hype, as I’ve written before, and look at the usefulness (or hype).
My first brush with vision systems was long ago. I told prospects that if we could fixture the part, we could check it. Speed and precision in cameras and processors continually improved. Now we have a further advance—flexible and low-cost bin picking for unstructured environments, achieving 95% success rates and sub-1-second pick cycles in live automotive production.
Inbolt announced the launch of its next-generation bin picking solution designed to bring human-like adaptability to industrial robotics. Built for fully unstructured environments, this breakthrough enables robots to identify, grasp, and place parts with unmatched flexibility and accuracy, even when objects are randomly positioned or partially hidden.
Using a 3D camera mounted directly on the robot arm, powered by Inbolt’s proprietary AI, the robot continuously perceives, understands, and adapts in real time. The AI delivers an infinite number of grasp strategies, removing the need for a perfect grasp. This provides a faster, cheaper, and more flexible solution that achieves less than 1 second per pick and up to 95% success rates in live manufacturing production.
How the solution operates inspired by human behavior.
- Pick like a human — The robot identifies any pickable side, just like a human.
- See in hand — Once the object is gripped, the robot analyzes and locates it.
- Adjust to place — During motion, the AI continuously refines the robot’s trajectory for accurate placement, a capability known as in-hand localization.
Key benefits include:
- Flexibility: Works with bins of any size or position, even if they move during operation.
- Speed: Average processing time per pick under 1 second.
- Reliability: Up to 95% successful pick rates in production environments.
- Affordability: One camera per robot, not per bin, and no need for complex overhead installations.
- Scalability: Fast integration across multiple stations or factories.
- Production-proven across plants
The system runs on NVIDIA’s hardware platform and leverages Inbolt’s proprietary AI robot guidance models, which enable real-time pose estimation and continuous trajectory correction. This unique architecture minimizes computational load while maximizing robustness, ensuring consistent performance across different use cases and part geometries.
by Gary Mintchell | Nov 26, 2025 | Automation, News, Robots, Technology
The only news emanating from Automation Fair last week was the announcement of a plan to build a 1 million sq ft manufacturing and warehousing facility in southeast Wisconsin. Executives also reinforced earlier news regarding its regrouping of the cybersecurity SecureOT Solution Suite and the new ControlLogix 5590.
Executives appeared before the assembled media and analyst folks attending to highlight areas of emphasis that Rockwell Automation wished to promote. These talks were enlightening about the current state of Rockwell Automation’s thinking on what is important in this market and where Rockwell fits at this time.
Bob Buttermore, senior vice president, chief supply chain officer, has often appeared as the point person for using Rockwell products and services to improve internal and external supply chains within the company. Part of the new plant announcement included investing $2B in Rockwell operations to test and prove the next generation of industrial technology.
Our existing facilities in Singapore, Twinsburg and Milwaukee serve as live innovation labs, showing how new tools and processes perform in real-world manufacturing. These plants give customers a front-row seat to breakthrough solutions and demonstrate how Rockwell is shaping the future of smart, efficient and resilient manufacturing.
The old Silicon Valley phrase was “eating your own dog food.” The today Rockwell Automation version is Rok on Rok. Buttermore told us the team in Singapore took initiative to work with the local government and internal Rockwell resources to bring reality to “factory of the future” improvements. Learnings from that initiative are being applied within the Twinsburg, Ohio facility. They will be used to build the new Wisconsin facility when the time comes.
Special kudos to Buttermore for going beyond the pablum “we use AI” phrase to pinpointing which aspects of AI are used where. So refreshing to get something closer to specifics.
Speaking of AI, Rockwell has an executive in charge. Jordan Reynolds, Vice President, Artificial Intelligence & Autonomy, spoke about companies going beyond embedding AI in technology by incorporating it in workflows, and further using it to empower the people using the technology.
His talking point—As AI becomes more deeply embedded in operations, manufacturers must ensure their teams are not only equipped with the right skills but also confident in using AI to make faster, smarter decisions. In fact, 47% of manufacturers responded that AI comfortability is a “very important skill” in their workforce according to the 2025 State of Smart Manufacturing Report, which marks a 10% increase from 2024.
Sustainability remains an important mission. A panel brought together leaders from Circulor, Bolder Industries, and Utility Global to discuss how their innovations are accelerating the transition to a low-carbon future. The conversation highlighted the role of circular manufacturing, supply chain transparency, and clean hydrogen in building reliable and sustainable energy infrastructure. Panelists discussed overcoming regulatory, operational, and technological challenges through strategic partnerships and advanced automation.
My long history with Rockwell Automation includes nothing about robotics. Given a couple of recent acquisitions, the company has a new vice president of robotics, Ryan Gariepy. He was CTO of OTTO, the recently acquired AMR company. He’s excited about bringing together the array of robotics technology. This includes software Unified Robot Control and software-defined automation. Mobile with Clearpath development platform and the OTTO Autonomous Mobile Robotics. An integration ecosystems with Emulate 3D and OTTO Fleet Manager.
Running the anchor leg of the relay was Dan DeYoung, Vice President & General Manager, Design & Control. We saw him later showing off the ControlLogix 5590. This session focused on the future of software-defined automation. Rockwell sees the future of industrial automation as one where control systems can rapidly adapt and grow as new disciplines emerge. “With software defined automation, we are rethinking how robotics, vision, AI and ML come together with the core strengths of our multidiscipline control. Our focus is on creating an environment where these technologies can be integrated with speed and simplicity, shaping a future where automation is more flexible, scalable and ready for what’s next.”
It was at this point that a question from the audience asked about adoption of IEC 61131 programming and especially about the PLCOpen nirvana of write once/run anywhere. That is, write control code in your IDE of choice in a 61131 language and then target control platforms from any vendor. There was no comment. (Something I expected.) As Ed Sheeran put it, I was Thinking Out Loud on this longer thought piece about that topic.
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by Gary Mintchell | Nov 10, 2025 | Automation, Commentary, Networking, Technology, Wireless
This is the weirdest press release I’ve received in a while. It appears that Pepperl + Fuchs needed to remind people it is still in the game. The company hasn’t updated me in years. I’ve known it mostly as a sensor manufacturer. This update concerns mobile devices, a market that companies such as this have pursued. Almost no one talks about augmented reality these days aside from speculation that Apple may move that way following the tepid acceptance of its virtual reality headset.
The release is obviously a marketing piece, but it provides observations useful to us all.
Hazardous areas
The digitalization of processes in hazardous areas places high demands on explosion protection. All infrastructure components used in these areas must be intrinsically safe or explosion-proof and certified. The Pepperl+Fuchs Group, a pioneer in the field of mobile devices for hazardous areas, meets these requirements with a comprehensive portfolio of certified solutions, from smartphones, tablets, and HMI systems to intrinsically safe barriers and remote I/O systems to Ethernet APL technology and sensor technology in hazardous areas.
As promised, news about augmented reality. This part of the story discusses virtues of AR without mentioning any P+F products. AR does hold promise, especially when companies need to bring in new employees who, of course, will not have had extensive experience.
Augmented reality (AR) offers enormous potential at device level for digitalizing processes. With the help of this technology, information can be brought directly into the field of vision and display of employees in real time and presented in a spatially and context-sensitive manner.
AR therefore offers particularly great potential for complex tasks such as shutdown work, commissioning, or fault diagnosis in areas that are difficult to access. The technology is also ideal for training and qualifying new employees, for example in practical on-the-job training with AR-supported instructions or via remote support. In addition, AR overlays can be linked to digital twins of assets to simulate scenarios. This integration significantly improves the basis for decision-making, increases efficiency, and ensures safe plant operation.
P+F touts 5G technology for communications. I’ve written about the hope of 5G for a few years. Only in the past few months has there been a successful use case presented to me using many of the anticipated benefits.
In addition to the necessary bandwidth, 5G also provides the low latency required to transmit AR content in real time and integrate it seamlessly. On site, technicians receive context-sensitive instructions, overlay markings on components, and live data such as sensor values or histories directly in their field of vision. At the same time, they can request support or instructions from remote experts at any time, who can be easily connected.
This shifts maintenance processes more toward just-in-time assistance, reducing errors and increasing first-time fix rates. Planning is shifting organizationally toward data- and event-driven workflows, for example, when predictive maintenance alerts automatically trigger AR checklists. An integrative approach is crucial here. AR and 5G are not isolated solutions. They must be seamlessly connected to CMMS/ERP systems, asset digital twins, and role and rights models.
Android Apps
Customers also benefit from the fact that Pepperl+Fuchs mobile devices are part of the Android Enterprise Recommended (AER) program. This guarantees consistent, easy deployment and management of mobile solutions through hardware and operating system support, as well as guaranteed security and operating system updates. The Samsung Knox mobile security solution also ensures a high level of device and data security for companies.
Connected workers—highly networked into the future. Summary.
Intrinsically safe tablets and smartphones already serve as digital and networked hubs for connected workers. They enable authentication, collect sensor data, and bundle a wide variety of communication channels. They also allow for the seamless integration of mobile scanners, IoT gateways, or communication peripherals such as headsets. This makes them a central component for safe, efficient, and networked work processes in hazardous areas.
In the future, platforms for “digital shift operation” will emerge that digitally map handover protocols, know-how transfers, shift handovers, and shift KPIs, thus enabling comprehensive shift digitalization. Step by step, the connected worker is evolving into a highly networked, smart-supported employee who can access and respond to all relevant information, analysis tools, and expert knowledge securely and context-sensitively in real time at any time.
“As a pioneer, Pepperl+Fuchs is continuously working on developing intuitive solutions to optimally connect people in industrial environments, simplify work processes, and sustainably increase efficiency,” says Christopher Limbrunner, Team Lead Product Management of the Enterprise Mobility division at Pepperl+Fuchs. “In addition to providing the right hardware, we also support our customers in the holistic planning and implementation of the necessary infrastructure. They benefit from our many years of expertise and a global support and service network. This ensures that applications are not only compliant and reliable, but also efficient and future oriented.”
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by Gary Mintchell | Oct 29, 2025 | Business, Security, Technology
Greg Hale, writing in his newsletter from ISS Source:
While the cloud does not dominate the everyday mechanisms of the manufacturing automation sector, this week’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage shows a clear dependance on any one of the three main providers is something every organization needs to review. Only three cloud providers dominate the global market, and when any of them experience outages, the ripple effects are massive,” said Dewan Chowdhury, chief executive and founder of security provider, malcrawler. “Universities lose access to online portals. Restaurants cannot process digital orders. Critical infrastructure operators lose visibility into their devices. This concentration of control has created a fragile ecosystem where one failure can disrupt entire sectors.” Amazon said this week’s outage which occurred Monday was likely caused by issues related to its domain name system, or DNS, which converts website addresses into numeric ones, allowing websites and apps to load on Internet-connected devices.
I’m with the supposed root cause. I’ve recently had two major issues due to WPMU Dev dinking around with my DNS and IP addresses. One little change, and my website is down—and it’s up to me to trace the problem.
David Heinemeier-Hansen, CTO and co-founder of 37 Signals, recently reviewed the risk and costs involved with the company’s reliance on these cloud services. He concluded that for a company of their size, they were better off financially and with risk by building their own.
I’ve been in the midst of discussions in another arena with the same idea—risk management. These discussions have focused on data interoperability. A company allowing multiple proprietary data silos invites a higher risk profile from the inability to find and act on data prudently and promptly.
What are you doing to mitigate risk?
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by Gary Mintchell | Oct 22, 2025 | Robots, Technology
Crazy Stupid Tech, Interview of Rodney Brooks with Om Malik.
iRobot Founder: Don’t Believe The (AI & Robotics) Hype!
This is a must read interview for all of us interested in the current technology trajectories. Veteran technology journalist Om Malik interviewed iRobot Founder Rodney Brooks about robots, AI, and technology trajectories.
We are in the middle of another massive technological wave, thanks to generative artificial intelligence and its offshoot, robotics. A tanker load of money is being poured into these two areas, and it has come with increasingly breathless promotional activity. It warrants a reality check. For that, I turned to Rodney Brooks, who has spent decades in both arenas. The Australian-born Brooks was a Professor of Robotics at MIT and former director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He has founded three companies: iRobot (maker of the Roomba), Rethink Robotics, and now Robust.AI, which now builds warehouse automation robots. He is an academic who entered the startup arena and hasn’t left it since.
Rodney: At MIT, I taught big classes with lots of students, so maybe that helped. I came here in an Uber this morning and asked the guy what street we were on. He had no clue. He said, “I just follow it.” (‘It’ being the GPS—Ed.) And that’s the issue—there’s human intervention, but people can’t figure out how to help when things go wrong.
Rodney: My companies have always been about letting the person still have control. The previous one, Rethink Robotics, involved people showing the robot what to do. The Roomba had a handle; if it got stuck, you could pick it up and move it. If a human grabs the Carta cart, they’re now in charge. If you grab its magic handlebar, you are like Superman—you move your hand a little, and it amplifies what you’re doing. We make the floor worker take control and put it in the right place without much physical effort.
There’s a tendency to go for the flashy demo, but the flashy demo doesn’t deal with the real environment. It’s going to have to operate in the messy reality. That’s why it takes so long for these technologies.
Rodney: I think we need multiple education approaches and not put everything in the same bucket. I see this in Australia—”What’s your bachelor’s degree?” “I’m doing a bachelor’s degree in tourism management.” That’s not an intellectual pursuit, that’s job training, and we should make that distinction. The German system has had this for a long time—job training being a very big part of their education, but it’s not the same as their elite universities.
[ Brooks is right in pointing out that we are busy propping up an education system that creates work for an industrial and industrial-version of digital economies. Germans (and many other parts of the world) have this idea of diplomas in specialized trade skills, which is exactly how we are going to be thinking about in the future, because the idea of work, augmented by digitized automation, both robotic and software, will need to evolve. As such, we need to really rethink the entire map of employment and fine-tune “collegial output” in terms of jobs needed to be done in tandem with the emergence of rapid computerized automation. The United States is still trying to use the same template of education that it has for decades. –OM ]
When Elon Musk decided he wanted to put stuff into orbit, he didn’t say, “I’ll write a Python script, and that will get stuff into orbit.” He had to figure out how to burn fuel efficiently, worry about mass, liquid flows, high temperatures, because you can write as big a program as you want, it’s not going to get stuff into orbit. Computation is not the stuff you need to physically move things.
I started manufacturing in China in the late ’90s. Just last week, my company put out a press release that Foxconn is going to build our robots at scale. They’re based in Taiwan, but it’s undeniable—if you want to do something at scale, that’s how you have to do it.
But let’s look ahead to this century. Fifty years from now, all the innovation is going to be happening in Nigeria. They’re going to be such a big part of the world population, and they’re going to have so many problems they have to deal with, and they will deal with them. Nigeria is going to be the center of the technological universe by the end of this century. (Just as China and its large population, and its need to solve its problems made it into an economic powerhouse, Brooks believes the sheer size of Nigeria is going to make it an economic and technological epicenter.–Ed)
Rodney: I was at a Brown University commencement giving a talk. And we were bemoaning the loss of US manufacturing. I asked the parents of the about to be Brown graduates—do who wants your kids to work in a factory? Oh no, not us! The poor people need the jobs, not my child. Who aspires that their kid is going to work at the sewage company? This bemoaning of manufacturing being lost is a little duplicitous—it’s not for us, it’s for the poor people.
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by Gary Mintchell | Oct 10, 2025 | Generative AI, Robots, Technology
I’ve been trying to guide AI discussion toward useful applications rather than overly hyped general visions. Let the people dealing in billions of dollars promote themselves. For those who have real work to do, look into the details of AI news to discern real benefits. Perhaps this news from ABB fits that model. This news also follows the trend of larger companies investing in specialist companies in order to drive additional benefits for their products and solutions.
In this case, ABB (robotics) has invested in LandingAI in order to improve the company’s robotic applications for customers. Oh, and we get a new TLA (three-letter acronym). Note the specific examples.
In brief:
- Strategic investment secures ABB’s use of LandingAI’s vision AI capabilities, such as LandingLens, for robot AI vision applications
- Pre-trained models, smart data workflows and no-code tools reduce training time by 80% and accelerate deployment in fast-moving sectors including logistics, healthcare, and food & beverage
- First of its kind collaboration marks a major step towards ABB Robotics’ vision for Autonomous Versatile Robotics – AVR
This first of its kind collaboration will integrate LandingAI’s vision AI capabilities, like LandingLens, into ABB Robotics’ own software suite, marking another milestone in ABB’s journey towards truly autonomous and versatile robots.
“This announcement is the latest in our decade-long journey to innovate and commercialize AI, benefitting our customers by enhancing robot versatility and autonomy to expand the use of robots beyond traditional manufacturing,” said Sami Atiya, President of ABB Robotics & Discrete Automation. “The demand for AI in robotics is driven by the need for greater flexibility, faster commissioning cycles and a shortage of the specialist skills needed to program and operate robots. Our collaboration with LandingAI will mean installation and deployment time is done in hours instead of weeks, allowing more businesses to automate smarter, faster and more efficiently.”
As part of the collaboration ABB has made a venture capital investment through ABB Robotics Ventures, the strategic venture capital unit of ABB Robotics, driving collaboration and investment in innovative early-stage companies that are shaping the future of robotics and automation. Financial details of the investment were not disclosed.
LandingAI’s LandingLens is a vision AI platform that enables the rapid training of vision AI systems to recognize and respond to objects, patterns or defects with no complex programming or AI expertise required.
Through this collaboration, ABB Robotics will reduce robot vision AI training & deployment time by up to 80 percent. Once deployed, system integrators and end users can retrain the AI for new scenarios on their own, unlocking a new level of versatility. This is a critical step in scaling robot adoption in dynamic environments, beyond traditional manufacturing, especially in fast-moving sectors such as logistics, healthcare and food and beverage. ABB is already piloting LandingAI’s technology and actively working to integrate it into existing vision AI applications, including item-picking, sorting, depalletizing and quality inspection.
More information about RobotStudio with generative AI assistant:
- RobotStudio Al Assistant provides real-time, step-by-step guidance for robot programming
- More intelligent and easy-to-use generative Al interface creates faster, easier commissioning and boosts productivity
- Another step in enhancing robot accessibility and versatility beyond traditional manufacturing
Powered by a Large Language Model (LLM) that understands and interprets human language, RobotStudio AI Assistant draws from ABB’s comprehensive library of manuals and documentation to deliver high-quality, context-rich responses to questions, enabling users to set up faster and find rapid answers to questions and technical challenges.
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