An experimental robot assistant for astronauts will redefine work at the International Space Station, and its IBM-powered brain is available for terrestrial jobs, too.

With the rise of e-commerce and the shipping standards set by Amazon, customers now have rising expectations on global delivery. Retailers and couriers are embracing this challenge, using automation and technology to make supply chain logistics faster, easier, and compatible with the 21st century.

Meet Versius. Versius is expected to be in operating rooms by the end of 2018 to assist surgeons with keyhole procedures. This could possibly lower the need for open surgery and cut down a surgeons keyhole surgery learning curve from 50-60 hours to only 30 minutes!

When we first met the Cheetah, a four-legged robot built by engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the machine was, frankly, not all that fascinating. Sure, it could run pretty quickly for a robot. But at 10 mph, the Cheetah was hardly as impressive as Boston Dynamics’ line of robo-dogs, nor could it keep up with its living, feline counterpart.

A smart bandage, capable of monitoring a wound and delivering periodic drug treatments, has been developed by a team of researchers at Tufts University. Currently just a prototype, the technology detailed in a recent paper in the journal Small could someday help transform medical treatment, enabling a doctor to more closely monitor her patient’s condition, while more actively treating it.

NIBIB-funded researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created an ingestible sensor to non-invasively monitor indicators of disease in the stomach and intestines.

Mobile service providers (MSP) are starting a bit late getting into the smart manufacturing industry. With the smart industry as is, it seems to be getting on just fine without MSPs. Will they be able to compete and offer more than just 5G to be needed and relevant?

How much money would you throw at a company promising to deliver Jetsons-like flying cars? If you’re anything like the venture capitalists involved with German aviation startup Lilium Aviation, the answer is $90 million. That is how much they invested in a recently completed Series B funding round.

What if human operators on the assembly line had some equivalent of a red, squiggly spellcheck line that highlighted errors as they were made?

Diesel is dead, petrols are to be outlawed and the future is all-electric. So scream the headlines and it’s true that the long-term future of conventionally fuelled vehicles seems to be bleak but is the future really going to be all about battery-powered electric cars?

Wireless charging is gradually becoming a more common feature for smartphones, so why not for electric cars, too?

If you have followed the recent announcements from Google, Samsung, Apple, and recently OnePlus, you have probably noticed a handful of new devices using a new, slick, universal serial bus (USB) connector, called USB Type-C.

The proliferation of data, and the tools technology has given us to make sense of this data, has made sizeable inroads in changing the way many industries operate. In manufacturing, the rise of ‘smart factories’ has re-invented the way factories operate, leveraging data, analytics and ‘connected everything’ to enable unprecedented levels of automation and optimisation.

The recent data explosion combined with the young workforce's penchant for video games and rewards can give gamification a reset, and allow your plant to hit new high scores.

As China's government guides its private sector towards robotics and AI, America's tech companies want the US to follow suit.

It used to be that the barriers to entry in manufacturing were high. Entering the market required enormous investment. While that is still the case for many organisations, because technology is changing so rapidly, new younger and dynamic organisations are entering the market and chasing market share.

While the impacts of machine intelligence (A.I. and machine learning) have been hotly debated, and even provoke anxiety in some, this group of technologies continues to accelerate at a remarkable pace. In fact, according to IDC, global spending on A.I. solutions will continue to see significant corporate investment, achieving revenues of more than $46 billion by 2020.

Manufacturing does not have to be a wasteful or uneconomical process. Adopting sustainable manufacturing can help maintain your business. Benefits from sustainability will go beyond just the walls of your facility. Not only will your company be more productive, it can also have a lower negative impact on society, the environment and the economy.

With the way AI is developing in the computer field, CNC routers bring in different controls as a way of improving the stability and performance of the whole system. CNC technology and its equipment are developing to help meet the market’s needs. This has led to many changes in the CNC router industry in the last decade, including software and technology.

Steve Jobs once said, “Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.” In the manufacturing industry, collaborative robots are joining the team to achieve even greater things. Here Jonathan Wilkins, marketing director of industrial obsolete parts supplier EU Automation, explains how to manage a mixed team of collaborative robots and humans.