Low-Cost-Automation
The French company SCALLOG has developed an autonomous robot called “Boby” that can transport shelves weighing up to 600kg in logistics warehouses. To maximise the robot’s range and minimise maintenance, the engineers rely on lubrication-free iglidur plain bearings from plastics specialist igus, which are wear-resistant and significantly lighter than comparable metal solutions.
E-mails, instant messages, printed greeting cards: communication in the business world quickly takes on an impersonal flavour. A robot from the company Spline Product Development in Arizona wants to change this. Thanks to maintenance-free linear technology from igus, it is able to write cards in human handwriting, making messages more emotional and ensuring greater resonance.
Robots are being used in more and more areas, from production in factories to care for the elderly. To help companies of all sizes realise the full potential of automation solutions and thus become more competitive, igus is now opening the RBTX Academy. Here, interested parties can work directly on real robots to learn the basics of robot technology or improve their skills in robot programming. The RBTX Academy opened its doors for the first time on 25th January, when igus hosted the dress rehearsal for RoboCup Junior 2025 – one of the best-known and largest robotics competitions for pupils in the world – at the Porz-Lind site in Cologne.
igus has added a new AI chatbot to the online platform RBTX.com. The interactive consultant is designed to enable companies with little previous experience and technological expertise to quickly and reliably put together Low Cost Automation (LCA) solutions to become more competitive. First users are enthusiastic about the intuitive AI solution.
Whether you’re visiting the Christmas market with friends or enjoying Christmas dinner with family, a good mulled or special wine is a must. To offer people this supposed matter of course even in times of labour shortages, winemakers must increasingly rely on automation during the grape harvest. However, slopes with a gradient of 75% and narrow rows of vines were previously considered impossible to automate. The German company CH engineering GmbH has developed a particularly compact harvesting vehicle for precisely this area of application. It uses a robust energy chain made of high-performance plastic from igus to work reliably even under difficult conditions, minimising maintenance work for winemakers.
With the new ReBeL Move, which the Cologne-based motion plastics specialist is presenting at Motek 2024, igus proves that the automation of material-handling processes doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated. The mobile robot moves autonomously through factory halls, transporting products from one place to another. It can also be combined with the ReBeL Cobot made of high-performance plastic. It only takes users with even the most basic IT skills an hour to commission and is available – including the ReBeL Cobot – for €34,808 (prices may differ in your country).
A hackathon took place at the igus headquarters in Cologne in mid-September. In line with the motto “Artificial intelligence meets robotics”, 17 participants worked in three interdisciplinary teams to develop advanced automation solutions for logistics. The aim of the hackathon was to create an automated method for packing up pizzas using a large language model (LLM for short) based on AI. The event was organised in cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS, the University of Bonn, the Lamarr Institute and the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML.
After a long day at the beach, enjoy your hotel room with a drink from the good old minibar. This is very different in some hotels. To the surprise of the guests, JEEVES shows up – a robot from the Munich-based company Robotise Technologies GmbH. The waitressing service robot replaces up to 300 minibars and relieves hotels in times of a shortage of skilled labour. The engineers rely on space-saving and fail-safe energy chains from igus to guide the sensitive energy and data cables so that they can do their job without disruption.
Bikes instead of cars: for the mobility transition to work, cities need more parking facilities without encroaching too much impact on the cityscape. For this purpose, the Japanese manufacturer Giken has built a garage called Eco Cycle, which parks bicycles completely automatically underground. To ensure the reliability of the robot garage, the engineers used robust and maintenance-free energy chains from igus for the lift’s cable guidance system.
With the growing demand for electric cars, the need for high-quality lithium-ion batteries is also increasing. For this reason, they should ideally be manufactured in dry cleanrooms with minimal humidity and as little particulate matter as possible. At the same time, this environment must be automated because people are not allowed to spend long periods of time in dry cleanrooms. To ensure safe and reliable energy supply to robots, motion plastics specialist igus has developed the triflex R TRC: the first robot energy supply system with a certification for dry cleanrooms from Fraunhofer IPA for ISO Class 4-5.