Last week I promised you to wrap-up automatica. After spending two very intense days in Munich, I had quite some time on my way back home to go through my impressions. First of all, it was almost overwhelming to physically reconnect to the robotics community after so many years (keep in mind the last automatica show took place in 2018). Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to question the value of online events and meetings here, but you have to admit that they are simply not the same as face2face meetings.
Thank God, it’s Automatica!
Michael Garstenauer, KEBA Industrial Automation GmbH
Automatica in figures
Shortly before the show began on June 27, Covid restrictions have been dropped and officials counted more than 28,000 visitors during these 4 days. The mood was very positive and there were 574 exhibitors from 35 countries to explore. Now this was a bit too much for me spending two days in Munich, I have to admit. So don’t expect a full coverage of the show from me!
Clear focus on customer benefit
Instead I went through the show with some clear questions in my mind. As I also had appointments with some customers, I focused on meetings I was invited to and luckily I had the chance to produce some great interviews bringing a variety of answers to these questions. So my message here is that I don’t claim to have seen everything, I concentrated rather on intensive discussions with a selected variety of exhibitors.
I tried to picture the owner or the responsible workshop manager of a small to medium sized company who has not applied any or too much automation to his shop floor, yet. Confronted with like more than 500 exhibitors and some special areas for AI, startups and other trending topics it must have been jaw-dropping and eventually she or he could easily feel a bit lost entering the show for the first time. But what is such a person being responsible for the success of the production really looking for, while she or he is facing a massive lack of skilled workers?
Does a workshop manager really need a robot?
What kind of workers is someone being responsible for production in an SMC really looking for? While automotive and T1 companies have decades of experience in robotics and they also have built up the whole infrastructure and the staff to run it, SMCs who want to start with robotics have first of all a need for experts in the field of robotics which are nowadays as hard to find on the market as a PLC. But in the same time, they really need skilled workers for their processes.
In reality, they need a welder!
Instead of a robot and the expert needed to run it, the company really needs a replacement for the welder who just retired. And with the welder, the experience for the process parameters might have gone, too.
How can an SMC be supported to set-up and run their processes in “auto-mode”?
This was basically the core question occupying my mind on my way to Munich and luckily, I had the chance to make a deep dive into it. I met some great people from whom I got invitations I gladly accepted and tried to get their opinions and perspectives for you. With Jens Fetzer, VP Business and Partner Development at Cenit, I discussed if an easy-to-use robot is really the final answer to complex application requirements or if rather the digital twin is the right way to go for (spoiler: there is no either/or answer to this topic here).
Cobot applications for industrial and non-industrial applications
With William (Junghoon) Ryu, CEO at Doosan Robotics, I had pleasure to discuss about the impact of a global shortage of skilled labour on non-industrial applications but he also showed me some fancy industrial applications as e.g. a polishing process in which a smart phone could be used to teach the tool path to the cobot. To round it up, he shared with me his global vision for the cobot market.
Does the next-generation robot have to be cognitive?
The next day started with a very energetic session with David Reger, CEO and Founder at NEURA Robotics. He took the time to give me an exclusive booth tour and guiding me through the vast majority of the 60 applications which were demonstrating his vision of a cognitive robot – a robot which can see, hear and feel.
Not only was I impressed by what he achieved with his company in only three years, I was specifically interested in the current status of the merger of robotics and AI and if there is already a solution available which makes the power of AI accessible to the end user in a “simple” way (normally you would need some python expert who is experienced in programming neuronal networks – and I guess they are even harder to get on the market as robot experts nowadays…). NEURA is working on a very interesting concept of “swarm intelligence”.
I have to say: I was impressed by his vision and by the examples he demonstrated! At the end of the fair, he dropped another bombshell – David managed to convince Till Reuter, ex-CEO at KUKA, to join NEURA’s management team.
Diversity leads to innovation
Unfortunately I hardly had the time to visit the start-up area which was showcasing a wide variety of new companies eagerly entering the challenging field of robotics. Probably it would have been easy to spend one complete day in this area, which was located in the vicinity of the AI area which I unfortunately had no time left at all to visit.
A friend of mine asked the following question: With all the variety of companies presented there you wonder which technologies at the end will succeed and if such a diversity is really viable. I had to think about it on my way back home. I do believe it is a very healthy environment to create new ideas and concepts in a really short time. Diversity leads to innovation.
During the show I had at least the opportunity to chat briefly with Marco Dutenstädter, VP Revenue at RobCo. We talked about the accessibility of AI for the end-user and he is also working on a low-entry barrier solution to support the commissioning process via AI.
From component supplier to solution provider
With Eilsabeth Ste-Marie, Field Marketing Manager Americas and with Romy Gingras, Key Account Manager, I talked about how Robotiq made the transition from a component supplier to a solution provider who is now able to offer a 3D configurator for different applications as machine tending, screwing and palletising which makes such applications for end users accessible without the need of an extensive commissioning phase. The idea of these applications is that they are non-invasive and that they can be used in brown-field environments, allowing the end-user to “physically replacing” a human machine operator (a cobot can also handle push-buttons, right?). And of course we talked about the beauty of Quebec and delicious maple syrup.
Evolution of industrial robots and launch of all new cobot series
I am rounding up my wrap-up with some of the few innovations in the field of “classical” industrial robots shown on the exhibition and with the launch of the all new cobot series KUKA LBR iisy, which was presented together with the new programming environment (or should I say “non”-programming environment, as it works codeless?) iiQKA and the kick-off of KUKA’s own eco-system.
As almost no other company exhibited new classical industrial robots, you could get the impression, that they are building the minority (while we all know, that the opposite is the case). KUKA showed the new KR800 which is bridging the gap between the existing 600 kg Fortec class and the 1,000+ kg Titan class.
Full interviews in the next episodes
I also promised you last time, that I will produce some videos from the show. I have had the chance to film the above mentioned interviews – so in the upcoming episodes I will publish this content. But as the interviews were really intense, I decided to cut one episode per interview out of it. It would be a pity to cut these conversation down to one-minute statements each…
Let me know in the comments below, if you want me to cut in addition a short wrap-up of the show. Also I’ll absolutely appreciate suggestions for other topics to cover in depth in the future.
Thanks for reading this rather extensive post – now you can imagine how I felt yesterday evening. I was exhausted, but very happy about these great conversations I had and about finally re-connecting to the robotics community.