Featured / Robotics
World Robotics 2026: Five Million Factory Robots—and What That Means
IFR’s 2026 report counts a record five million industrial robots in factories in 2025: a global measure, not a reason for any one plant to automate.
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Robotics
PLC–Robot Handshake: State Machines, Signals and Fault Recovery
A dependable PLC–robot interface is an agreed state machine with acknowledgements, timeouts and explicit restart conditions, not a few loosely timed bits.
Reviews and comparisons
External Hard Drive vs SSD: A Practical Buying Checklist for 2026
Research-based comparison of portable SSDs and hard drives: host USB compatibility, sustained throughput, capacity, resilience and independent backup.
Recently published
Robotics
LiDAR and SLAM in AMRs: Mapping, Localization and Safety
Learn how LiDAR, SLAM, localization and Nav2 planning work in AMRs, and why navigation sensors are different from validated industrial safety scanners.
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Robotics insights
Automation decisions, explained
Practical considerations for selecting, integrating and operating industrial robots.
Robotics & engineering
What are you trying to automate?
Start with the task, then explore the practical trade-offs and planning tools. No contact details needed.
- Welding Robot cells or cobot welding
- Machine tending Load and unload CNC, lathes, presses
- Palletizing End of line, boxes and bags
- Pick & place Handling, sorting, packing
- Robot vision Locate, inspect, bin picking
- AMR / AGV Internal logistics
- Retrofit an old cell Reuse, replace or modernize
- Size a robot Payload and reach envelope
- Not sure yet Start from the problem
Free planning tools
- Industrial robots Eurobots(opens in a new tab)
- Cobots, mobile robots and vision ReBots(opens in a new tab)
Explore Robotics & Automation Discuss a project(opens in a new tab)
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