The Robot Revival

Robots have long been a manufacturing mainstay--tasked with doing the heavy lifting on the assembly line or taking over tedious repetitive motions. Up until recently, however, they've been limited to basic activities, typically on the automotive factory floor. But advancements in the form of small, light-weight collaborative robots, cloud analytics and artificial intelligence are ushering in a new era of robot applications and collaboration that will support a wide variety of industries. Industry observers say these new robot systems will transform the way products are made, as well as the way people work. "The next step is changing the way we work globally," said Esben Østergaard, CTO of collaborative robot company Universal Robots during an interview at IMTS 2016.