ABB group, a Swedish-Swiss industrial automation company is set to partner with Kawasaki Heavy industries to increase awareness and promote benefits of collaborative robots. Since its inception from a merger with the Swedish company, ASEA in 1988, ABB has grown to be a leading supplier of industrial robots, equipment and complete application solution

The partnership which was announced on 27^th of November, 2017 will focus on dual arm designs capable of human interactions. Both companies will work together to improve awareness opportunities and technical potentials. There will be a presentation on collaborative dual arm robot demonstration at the International Robot Exhibition (IREX) in Japan from November 29, the statement said.

According to the company’s website, collaborative robots can help reduce the effects of labor shortages and aging workforce. Collaborative robots or ‘cobots’ are robots which work with human employees in a shared workspace. Cobots have become increasingly popular as industries seek to explore the world of industrial digitization.

ABB is not new to collaborative automation; it is in fact known as one of the pioneers of collaborative automation. In April 2015, ABB introduced the world’s first collaborative dual arm robot called ‘YuMi’, robots that are able to work collaboratively with humans. Therefore, this partnership is another innovative way ABB shows its commitment to the future of industrial digitalization. In a tweet, CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer said that the winning formula for global industrial production comes from human ingenuity and improvisation combined with robotic precision and endurance.

IBASE, a Taiwan-based leader in the world of motherboards and embedded system manufacturing, recently launched its E-mark Certified MPT V-Series in-vehicle systems. They are the MPT-3000V in-vehicle system and the MPT-7000V Expandable in-vehicle system. Both systems come with Intel® Atom™ Processor E3845 and 7th/6th Generation Intel® Core™ processors respectively.

Since its inception in 2000, IBASE has focused on manufacturing industrial motherboards and single board computers for medical, networking, transportation and retail markets. In addition, the company has made significant contribution to the growing IoT (internet of things) market. The launching of the MPT V-series in-vehicle systems are IBASE’s intelligent transportation systems that comes on the heel of the growing demand in this market.

The fan-less MPT V-series system contain dual SIM sockets with wireless communication redundancy, fully car battery power control, wide range voltage GPIO interface, optional CAN, rich I/O interfaces for wireless, SSD, GPS,WWAN and-on card expansion. The systems also offer protective and safety management measures through their self-protective, self-debugging and reporting abilities. Their general purpose input and output (GPIO) can be used as compartment data processor, message display controller, communication relay station and traffic or fleet management systems.

Founded in 1988 by Thomas Edison, General Electric has resisted the wave of disruption sweeping 19^th century industrial companies by continuously reinventing itself. As part of its relentless push towards modernization, the company announced its partnership with the tech giant, Apple, on 18^th of October.

According to GE website, Apple and GE have collaborated to develop a set of industrial apps for GE’s IoT platform, Predix, using Apple’s advanced operating systems. In 2015, GE released Predix, a cloud based platform that uses industrial data and analytics for system wide optimization. The app was designed to help industrial customers leverage the vast amount of industrial data for improved industrial performance. For example, users can use data gathered from Predix cloud to gain more insight into the health and performance of their equipment. In addition, GE can use such analytics to improve on existing business models.

The companies also revealed a new software development kit (SDK) that allows users to create their own apps on Predix that enables access to data and analytics on the platform. The partnership with Apple leverages the tech giant’s deep knowledge of iOS to deliver such apps to IPhone and IPad. This partnership also extends to GE’s move to standardize iPhone, iPad and Mac devices for its workforce globally.