North American companies are onboarding robot workers at a faster-than-ever pace. According to the Association for Advancing Automation, companies ordered a record-setting 12,305 machines in the second quarter of 2022. "The pandemic definitely highlighted some areas and shortages in resources needed to be automated, and customers had to automate just due to the fact that people weren't coming back to the workplace," FANUC North America Vice President Louis Finazzo said. "For a long time, the automotive industry accounted for 60 to 70% of robot orders," Association for Advancing Automation President Jeff Burnstein said. "And we knew that when other industries started adopting is when we would really see growth, which is finally happening now, in part due to the pandemic forcing companies to look at other options when they couldn't bring people into work."

Polar Manufacturing has been making metal hinges, locks, and brackets in south Chicago for more than 100 years. Some of the company's metal presses--hulking great machines that loom over a worker--date from the 1950s. Last year, to meet rising demand amid a shortage of workers, Polar hired its first robot employee. The robot arm performs a simple, repetitive job: lifting a piece of metal into a press, which then bends the metal into a new shape. And like a person, the robot worker gets paid for the hours it works.

Companies in North America added a record number of robots in the first nine months of this year as they rushed to speed up assembly lines and struggled to add human workers. Factories and other industrial users ordered 29,000 robots, 37% more than during the same period last year, valued at $1.48 billion, according to data compiled by the industry group the Association for Advancing Automation. That surpassed the previous peak set in the same time period in 2017, before the global pandemic upended economies. The rush to add robots is part of a larger upswing in investment as companies seek to keep up with strong demand, which in some cases has contributed to shortages of key goods. At the same time, many firms have struggled to lure back workers displaced by the pandemic and view robots as an alternative to adding human muscle on their assembly lines.

When companies lose to their competition, that's when workers lose jobs." These astute comments and others by Jeff Burnstein, president at Association for Automation (A3), were part of a response to a New York Times column written by Thomas B. Edsall that blames robots and artificial intelligence for the displacement of large chunks of Midwestern workers and claims this led to today's current political divisions. I think it would be far more entertaining for us all to check out "Alita: Battle Angel," an epic adventure of hope, empowerment and technology. Like robots and automation, Alita has unique abilities that those in power will stop at nothing to control. This 20th Century Fox film is the futuristic world of Robert Rodriguez, James Cameron and Jon Landau, opening Feb. 14. "Embrace these robots and the new ones as they arrive." In his column, Edsall quotes economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University: "The Midwest and sections of the South have far higher ratios of robots to population than other regions of the United States." It seems to me Edsall doesn't understand where much of the manufacturing in the United States is located. He should look up where manufacturing contributes well to the U.S. economy and at a higher rate than many other industries. "In actuality, robots and automation have saved and created jobs--and will continue to do so," reads Burnstein's column. Burnstein also noted that Edsall has a gross misunderstanding of the role automation plays in the American economy. "Over the last 25 years, many American manufacturers found themselves unable to compete with the lower costs and higher productivity of foreign manufacturers," writes Burnstein. "They closed their doors or moved their operations.

Bringing IoT to a factory floor is as much about robots as it is about any other class of device. Meanwhile, robots are more attractive in their own right because labor costs are rising globally. Although robotics for automation generally focuses on movement and manipulations, IoT and robotics involves a world of devices in the field -- devices that depend on electronic sensors and software. "A lot of companies have outsourced for low-cost labor, but labor in China is going up in cost by 15% a year," said Jim Lawton, COO at Rethink Robotics Inc., a company that focuses on designing robots that work well with humans. In fact, he noted, almost every manufacturing company he has spoken with in recent years complains about the lack of labor; temporary help firms are hired to bring in workers and by lunch time, half of them are gone, he said.

Workplaces where humans labor side by side with robots and other automation systems will become more common in the years ahead, and one of the trends fueling these types of environments is the advancement of collaborative robotics. There are some things that machines are simply better at doing than humans, but humans still have plenty going for them. Here's a look at how the two are going to work in concert to deliver a more powerful future for IT, and the human race. With collaborative robot applications, humans and robots can occupy the same workspace at the same time while the system is in automatic mode, said Jeff Burnstein, president of the Association for Advancing Automation (A3), the umbrella association for Robotic Industries Association, Advancing Vision Imaging and Motion Control & Motor Association. Among the biggest considerations in the industry is ensuring the safety of the people working alongside robots.