The AI solution for clamping systems in the automotive industry prevents expensive production line shutdowns due to clamp failure. Festo has been named an artificial intelligence (AI) champion for the company's project Intelligent Pneumatic Runtime Monitoring. The award was given during the inaugural Baden-Württemberg awards ceremony on August 11. Baden-Württemberg, Germany's third largest state, is one of the country's leading regions for AI development. Thousands of pneumatic clamping systems are used daily in the automotive industry for tasks such as holding individual parts in place during body-shop welding.

You may have heard of the term biomimicry before -- the practice of using a design that nature and evolution has perfected. The German robotics firm Festo does this exceedingly well. One of its latest creations is a swallow that really does fly like a bird. Seriously: You have to see it to believe it. We just happened to be web surfing today when we came across a post from IEEE Spectrum.

German engineering company Festo has created robotic birds capable of amazingly realistic flight.The firm acknowledges that the robo-birds don't have any business applications yet, but hopes one could be found in future.Until then, a whole fleet (or flock) of the birds have been unveiled in a video showing off how they can take to the air.Festo has built miniaturised robots before, but nothing quite like these birds, which are able to flutter through the air, gliding and even directing themselves thanks to a radio system.Officially called the BionicSwift, the next generation robot is able to fly thanks to ultra-lightweight artificial feathers.Each device weighs only 42 grams, meaning nine of them would weigh the same as a full soft drink can – or about twice as much as a real swallow.Festo has managed to get the birds to fly with realistic motion thanks to the artificial feathers and soft plates covering their bodies.When the BionicSwift robots rise in the air, these lightweight plates bunch up to provide the lift – and when the robo-birds descend, the plates fan out to allow them to glide gracefully, or to make sharp turns and fly in loops.

Photo: FestoOver the years, Festo, a German automation company with a penchant for robots, has designed countless Mother Nature-inspired automatons that swim, hop, and fly like their real-world counterparts. That includes robotic birds, which have now been upgraded with fake feathers that allow the robots to soar through the air with the same maneuverability and agility as the real thing.AdvertisementNine years ago, Festo revealed a robotic seagull with wings that could bend and flap like the wings on the real-life terrors of the beach. The robotic bird was able to stay aloft by simply flapping its wings without the need for an additional propeller or other thrust mechanism to create forward momentum. It could also steer by adjusting the angle of its tail, and while it was an engineering marvel, its in-air maneuverability was limited.Gif: Festo (Other)AdvertisementThe latest version of Festo's robotic bird, BionicSwift, is a completely different story. One electric motor powers the flapping motion of the robot's wings, while two others make adjustments to the bird's …

Over the years, Festo, a German automation company with a penchant for robots, has designed countless Mother Nature-inspired automatons that swim, hop, and fly like their real-world counterparts. That includes robotic birds, which have now been upgraded with fake feathers that allow the robots to soar through the air with the same maneuverability and agility as the real thing. Nine years ago, Festo revealed a robotic seagull with wings that could bend and flap like the wings on the real-life terrors of the beach. The robotic bird was able to stay aloft by simply flapping its wings without the need for an additional propeller or other thrust mechanism to create forward momentum. It could also steer by adjusting the angle of its tail, and while it was an engineering marvel, its in-air maneuverability was limited.

A four-winged robotic "dragonfly" with Long Island connections has landed -- in the pages of Guinness World Records 2020. The BionicOpter, created by Festo AG, a global company with operations in Islandia, has been crowned the world's largest flying robotic insect. The bionic insect, with a wingspan of almost 25 inches and a body length of more than 17 inches, won the designation in Guinness World Records 2020 published this month. The 6-ounce device, which can fly and hover, accompanies entries for the most tattooed man, the farthest arrow shot (using your feet) and the most expensive commercially available hot dog ($169 by Seattle's Tokyo Dog in February 2014). Festo executive Michael Zakrzewski said the BionicOpter is one of a series of robotic devices developed by Festo that mimic the motions of animals.

As the division between manual production work performed by humans and automated work handled by robots and other equipment becomes less concrete, an array of new tools is coming to market to facilitate this burgeoning flexibility. Within the past year, we've reported on the introduction of the Mate exoskeleton--a wearable robotic technology designed to assist human shoulder movement in production operations, and FT-Produktion's use of the RG2 double gripper to provide a single robot arm with two "hands" for parts feeding. Now, we've learned that Festo has developed a Bionic SoftHand and Bionic SoftArm--pneumatic robot technologies designed to extend human capabilities into the automation realm. According to Festo, the fingers of the BionicSoftHand "consist of flexible bellows structures with air chambers. The bellows are enclosed in the fingers by a special 3D textile coat knitted from high-strength elastic threads. This makes it light, flexible, adaptable and sensitive, yet capable of exerting strong forces."

Robotic technology had come a long way in the past couple of decades, with more intelligent machines capable of superhuman feats that were once thought impossible. Robots are great at doing things humans can't, but giving machines the ability to mimic humans instead of surpassing us has proven to be challenging in some very interesting ways. One of the ways robots tend to come up short when compared to us meat creatures is in their sense of touch. You can make a human-shaped hand out of metal and plastic just fine, but our flesh allows us to manipulate held objects in ways that robots often can't. Now, a new soft robot concept could help to change that, and to be honest it looks kinda creepy.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. Whether free and flexible movements or defined sequences, thanks to its modular design, the pneumatic lightweight robot can be used for numerous applications. In combination with various adaptive grippers, it can pick up and handle a wide variety of objects and shapes.

Whether it's grabbing, holding or turning, touching, typing or pressing -- in everyday life, we use our hands as a matter of course for the most diverse tasks. In that regard, the human hand, with its unique combination of power, dexterity and fine motor skills, is a true miracle tool of nature. What could be more natural than equipping robots in collaborative workspaces with a gripper that is modelled after this model of nature, that solves various tasks by learning through artificial intelligence? Festo will be showing off the pneumatic robot hand BionicSoftHand at Hanover Fair 2019. Combined with the BionicSoftArm, a pneumatic lightweight robot, these Future Concepts are suitable for human-robot collaboration.