Market trends and business perspectives
There are two ways to make money. You can exchange your time and expertise for a salary. Alternatively, you can buy an asset or create a system that will make you money even while you’re away.
Having a job that pays you a fixed salary is great. But creating passive income is where you want to invest more energy. In this guide, we’ll show you how to leverage automation to make passive income conveniently. Let’s dive right in. [Read more…] about Ways Automation Changed the Way People Invest
At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, car manufacturing companies such as Ford quickly shifted their production focus from automobiles to masks and ventilators.
To make this switch possible, these companies relied on people working on an assembly line. It would have been too challenging for a robot to make this transition because robots are tied to their usual tasks.
Theoretically, a robot could pick up almost anything if its grippers could be swapped out for each task. To keep costs down, these grippers could be passive, meaning grippers pick up objects without changing shape, similar to how the tongs on a forklift work. [Read more…] about Washington university develops 3D-printed robotic gripper that can pick up anything, no matter what its geometry
ATI Industrial Automation and 3M will co-present a free webinar, Three Pillars of Successful Material Removal, on Thursday, May 14, 2020 at 12pm ET.
The event, hosted by the Robotics Industries Association, will identify key concepts for successful robotic material removal.
The presentations by Dan Merritt, ATI’s material removal product manager, and Sarah Mullins, 3M global applications engineer, will feature real-world examples of the benefits of robotic material removal and illustrate how common challenges are overcome with the right application design. [Read more…] about ATI partners with 3M to present webinar about material removal tools
Night vision devices (often called night scoped by the general public) are used to intensify our sight when the lighting conditions are very poor. You can choose from many types of such devices. You’ll find a complete review on many sites that can help you find out more about the present-day technology.
An infrared imaging system, also called an “active” night vision device, will focus the infrared light on a certain scene. Since infrared is not in the light spectrum that humans can notice, the beam that is produced is not detectable. The technology of image-converting is what transforms said illuminated scene by the infrared into an image we can see.
A thermal imaging system doesn’t work very differently as this one can convert the pattern of heat that is emitted by people, animals or objects, into an image we can distinguish.
The night vision devices that were initially created for wars, but are now available in stores for the general public, are known under the “passive” night vision system name. Such a system has the role of amplifying an image that was picked up in a minimal light (for example, starlight), into an image we can see.
The view that we get using such a device is anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 times brighter than the image our eyes could see without any such device.
Said devices for night vision were initially created for and only used by the army since being able to see in the dark gives you a big advantage over the enemy and can be used as a tactic to have the upper hand. Wars in which night vision devices were used are the Vietnam War and the Persian Gulf War.
These devices have also started to be used by the police forces. By the late 1990s, these items were being available for the public for the first time as well. They started by being used in high-end cars and are now available for most everybody to be used when they please.
How did it all start?
The research for devices that can work during the nighttime started in the United States, in the 1940s. The country managed to create a technology program by the end of the decade and in the 1950s it created an infrared viewing system. This falls into the “active” technology category because it made use of a directed beam of infrared light.
Although this beam was not noticeable by the naked eye, a person having the equivalent technology could manage to pick up the beam easily. The types of viewers that were used during the mid-1950s and 1960s are now known as “Generation 0” technology.
ITT Corporation started being the producer of night vision devices for the US military in 1958. The Department of Defense would later found its own laboratory in 1965 with the aim of improving the technology that was already existing. In the same decade, scientists created the first passive night vision system that could be considered workable.
Such a device bore the name “Starlight” as they had the ability to pick up and amplify the images that could only be seen by starlight. It came to be known as a “Generation I” device and, obviously, gave the best results under the moonlight.
New developments and commercialism
After being used in the Vietnam War, the technology started to develop more, creating devices that were smaller and less bulky and were called “Generation 2” devices. During the 1970s and the 1980s, the U.S. military worked continuously on developing and refining this technology and passive “Generation 2” devices appeared.
By the end of the 1980s “Generation 3” technology was being developed. These products had better resolutions even when the light was really low. The US Army used them in the Persian Gulf War and the troops had the advantage of seeing in the dark, but also through smoke or dust.
At the end of the 1990s, the Department of Defense cut much of the funding for the development of night vision and the shift of the producers moved to the consumer market.
In a short period of time, night vision devices went from just an idea to one important part of any combat to being used by everyday citizens.
The current robotics limelight tends to focus on the ability of new innovations to automate tasks, but a less publicized development is taking place whereby passive exoskeletons have been slowly deployed and adopted to help augment the capability of human workers.
Exoskeleton popularization through passive suits will provide a base for increased resources for powered suits, which will eventually provide significant augmentative capability to the industrial workforce.
By 2028, global Exoskeleton revenues will reach $5 billion with hundreds of thousands of active exoskeletons being deployed, according to ABI Research. The research consultancy’s findings are on its report, Exoskeletons for Industrial Use Cases.
[Read more…] about Exoskeleton market projected to grow to $6 billion
John Mitchell, global business development manager of supply, repair and field service specialist, CP Automation, shares his top tips for companies that want to commission or replace harmonic filters
In 1976, it was discovered that the bacteria causing Legionnaires disease, an atypical strain of pneumonia, had always been present in water, but it was the precise temperature of the water in heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems that facilitated the bacteria’s maximum reproduction levels. This is just one example of the unintended consequences of technology.
A similar and more recent story comes from the world of industry and features the growing problem of harmonic currents and utility level voltage distortion, as a result an increasing number of non-linear loads in industrial and commercial environments. [Read more…] about Don’t let harmonics get you down: Top tips for choosing the right harmonic filter
