Robotics & Automation News

Where Innovation Meets Imagination

Abdul Montaqim

Interview with MTC’s Mike Wilson: ‘Automation is not optional if the UK wants to rebuild manufacturing’

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Readers not old enough to remember what are often referred to as the “Thatcher years” may not appreciate how dramatically the UK’s economy changed during the 1980s.

Like some other Western economies, particularly the US, the UK increasingly shifted its focus toward services, finance, retail, and consumer spending, while manufacturing became a smaller part of the national economy.

Before Margaret Thatcher became prime minister in 1979, manufacturing accounted for roughly 30 percent of UK national income and employed around 6.8 million people. [Read more…] about Interview with MTC’s Mike Wilson: ‘Automation is not optional if the UK wants to rebuild manufacturing’

How to Evaluate a Link Building Agency Before You Sign Anything

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Choosing a link building services provider is one of the higher-stakes vendor decisions an SEO team makes. A bad partner can generate hundreds of links that do nothing – or worse, attract a Google manual action that takes months to recover from. A good one builds domain authority that compounds. 

The problem is that most agencies use the same language regardless of quality: white hat, high-authority, contextual, editorial. Those words have been repeated so often they’ve lost meaning.

Before signing a contract, the evaluation process needs to go deeper than a sales deck and a testimonial page. There are specific questions, red flags, and verification steps that separate providers who deliver measurable results from those who deliver reports. Here is a framework for doing that evaluation properly. [Read more…] about How to Evaluate a Link Building Agency Before You Sign Anything

8 Tips to Evaluate LMS Pricing Plans

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Choosing a learning platform affects budgets long before the first lesson opens. Many pricing pages appear clear, yet real expense often sits in implementation work, service limits, learner volume, and renewal language.

Careful review helps decision-makers avoid avoidable waste and protect program quality. The eight tips below give procurement, finance, and training leaders a practical method for judging offers with better evidence, steadier assumptions, and fewer unpleasant surprises after signature. [Read more…] about 8 Tips to Evaluate LMS Pricing Plans

Summer BBQ Safety Tips: How to Avoid Food Poisoning

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Summer BBQs combine heat, raw meats, and outdoor environments, all of which can raise the risk of food contamination if not handled properly.

Food poisoning is not only unpleasant but can also lead to serious health issues. Fortunately, with the right precautions and tools, you can significantly reduce these risks and enjoy your BBQ with confidence. [Read more…] about Summer BBQ Safety Tips: How to Avoid Food Poisoning

High-powered panel discussion: Why aren’t there more women in engineering?

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They say “Necessity is the mother of invention”, but that seems to be one of the only times in popular imagination that a female is associated with engineering, which is what invention almost always entails.

The truth is women engineers are few and far between, no matter which country we are talking about – throughout history and even today.

At present, they make up approximately 16 percent of UK engineers. In other words, the overwhelming majority of engineers in the UK – 84 per cent – are male.

That may or may not surprise some people, but it’s not something that sits well with the Royal Academy of Engineering, which hosted a panel discussion about the subject and debated what can be done to redress the imbalance. [Read more…] about High-powered panel discussion: Why aren’t there more women in engineering?

Blueprint for a robotic workforce: Can the UK close its automation gap?

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A panel of industry and technology leaders gathered in London last week to examine a question that is becoming increasingly urgent for the UK economy: not whether automation is beneficial, but how it can be deployed at scale across industry.

The event, titled “Blueprint for a Robotic Workforce” and hosted at the London College of Contemporary Arts near the famous Tower Bridge, brought together representatives from across the robotics, finance, education and policy landscape.

The session was chaired by Professor Mike Wilson, chief automation officer at the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), who set the tone with a data-driven overview of the UK’s current position. [Read more…] about Blueprint for a robotic workforce: Can the UK close its automation gap?

Why material selection mistakes in corrosive environments still lead to avoidable operational risk

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Corrosive environments continue to create challenges across many industrial sectors. Components may be exposed to moisture, chemicals, heat, pressure, or aggressive media for long periods of time, and that places constant demands on material performance.

In these settings, operational risk does not only come from equipment failure or process instability. It can also start much earlier, with the wrong material choice.

A product may look suitable on paper, yet still prove to be a weak fit once real operating conditions begin to take effect. That is why material selection remains an important part of risk control in corrosive environments. [Read more…] about Why material selection mistakes in corrosive environments still lead to avoidable operational risk

The autonomous future of farm vehicles: Interview with John Deere business manager Jesse Haecker

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This article was first published on December 1, 2022, and is being republished here because of technical problems with the previous version.

John Deere is, by most accounts, the world’s largest manufacturer of agricultural machinery – tractors, combine harvesters and so on. The 185-year-old American giant generated revenues of more than $61 billion in fiscal year 2023. 

The next three companies on the list are, in order, Kubota ($15 billion revenue), CNH Industrial ($11 billion), and AGCO ($9 billion). So Deere is clearly in the lead now, but one of those three companies – CNH Industrial – may be in a good position to grow its market share going forward because it launched a quite striking looking autonomous tractor a couple of years ago.

While CNH’s machine may look too futuristic for most farms, possibly leading people to believe it won’t take off any time soon, John Deere has nonetheless responded to the whole autonomous trend by launching its own driverless tractor (pictured below), which was showcased at the recent CES event. [Read more…] about The autonomous future of farm vehicles: Interview with John Deere business manager Jesse Haecker

The ultimate investing machine: Interview with BMW i Ventures’ Sage who backed Kodiak

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Kasper Sage, managing partner at BMW i Ventures, gives us some insight into the investment strategy of the venture capital arm of the German automotive giant. By Abdul Montaqim

One of the things we have found most surprising in the past six or seven years since we started publishing RoboticsAndAutomationNews.com is the amount of investment that has gone into the robotics and automation sector – not just from the pockets of people who start their own companies, but also from what could be regarded as outside sectors, specifically pure investment vehicles.

And that investment keeps growing, with 2024 shaping up to be another blockbuster year. According to Crunchbase, the total amount of investment into robotics, automation, and computer vision startups has exceeded $4.2 billion – in seed funding and growth-stage financing – so far this year. [Read more…] about The ultimate investing machine: Interview with BMW i Ventures’ Sage who backed Kodiak