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It’s said you don’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been. For Industry 4.0 and advanced manufacturing, digital libraries provide that map.

Speed, safety and efficiency are important to running a successful manufacturing floor. The more efficient workers are on the floor, the quicker products can be finished and sent to their destination. The major opponent to efficiency on the floor is, of course, waste.

Have collaborative, six-axis robots reached a tipping point in establishing their niche in manufacturing? And could they be opening doors for manufacturers to adopt automation overall?

A talk with Shannon Bennett, implementation and Sales Engineer at Visual Knowledge Share Ltd.

Smart Manufacturing sat down with KIMBERLEY HAGERTY, Industry 4.0 digital manufacturing transformation manager at Pratt & Whitney, at the Westec conference in Los Angeles in September to hear about the progress her firm is making adopting smart manufacturing processes, solutions and strategies.

I’ve had quite a month, again, covering clever software and gadgets that continue to inch their way into performing tasks once reserved for humans. These tasks range from mundane material handling to highly skilled engineering design. It has made me think quite a bit about how our world of manufacturing and engineering will be affected by all this artificial cleverness.

In the early days at CNC Software, we saw that our Mastercam CAD/CAM system was only part of a larger manufacturing solution and that an open architecture foundation could allow seamless data communication with complementary devices and systems across the shop floor.

A team of researchers from UC Berkeley, led by Pieter Abbeel, is working on the creation of smart robots that are teachable and can learn new skills without pre-programming. Abbeel and his team also formed a startup called Embodied Intelligence with the aim of developing artificial intelligence (AI) software to enable robots to learn from humans to perform complex tasks.

While cameras and motion control have worked in tandem for at least 15 years, their integration has improved because networks have gotten faster, more reliable, and more deterministic (i.e., nothing will interfere with a function that’s a priority).

Manufacturers continue to be bombarded with an onslaught of technology terms, as well as different ideas on where to begin and how to proceed. This confusion has slowed the adoption of new technology. Yet a big opportunity for a huge increase in efficiency awaits.