21st century themes: Robotic automation

The use of automatic equipment in manufacturing and other processes has been around for decades. Over time, technological advances have enabled more sophisticated automation, giving rise to the concept of intelligent automation, or robots. What’s probably best described as robotic automation has enjoyed strong growth, around 12%, in the past decade. This strong growth is likely to be sustained owing to improving economic viability and other drivers. Rapid technological progress is probably the key driver of robotics adoption and three developments should be especially significant. One is uniform messaging system software that enables different robotic expertise to work with each other, significantly lessening a practical barrier to progress. Another is 3-D printing, which makes it easier and quicker for new robotics concepts to move from design to production. The other is cloud computing, which essentially expands robotic capabilities by conveniently and cheaply boosting information access capabilities. (VIEW LINK)