Industrial news
Short summaries of what matters in robotics, each linking to its original source, plus our own interviews and features. Have a story?
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Danish tooling maker OnRobot has started shipping the 2FGP20 Fork, an all-electric palletizing gripper for open, display and other low-rigidity boxes weighing up to 16 kg. It needs no compressed air, includes a vacuum pump for slip sheets, and comes with plugins for robots from ABB, Fanuc, Universal Robots, Doosan and others, replacing the custom pneumatic tools such jobs often required.
· Robotics Tomorrow
ABB Robotics has introduced two compact industrial robots, the IRB 1700 and the IRB 1700ID, with payloads of 6 to 12 kg across five variants and path repeatability down to 0.03 mm. ABB says they cut cycle times by up to 20% and use up to 15% less power. The ID version routes cables inside the arm, and both debut at CIIF in Shanghai for electronics, automotive and general industry.
· Robotics Tomorrow
ABB Robotics has extended its OmniCore EyeMotion vision software with AI Robot Trainer, a guided workflow that takes integrators from collecting shop-floor images to training, deploying and refining AI vision models without AI specialists. ABB says it works with any camera brand and can shorten commissioning by up to 90%, with uses from pick-and-place and bin picking to inspection and assembly.
· Robotics Tomorrow
Kawasaki Robotics will show the CP110L, a four-axis palletizer with a 110 kg payload and 2,505 mm reach, in North America for the first time at PACK EXPO in Chicago on October 18-21. Rated at up to 2,200 cases per hour, it targets end-of-line packaging in plants with tight floor space or low ceilings.
· Robotics Tomorrow
Teradyne Robotics and Elite Robots have settled the case in which Teradyne claimed Elite's cobot software infringed copyright in Universal Robots software. A Hamburg court had issued a preliminary injunction in April 2026 restricting Elite in Germany; the terms of the settlement were not disclosed and Elite admits no liability.
· The Robot Report
DEKRA has independently certified Techman Robot's TM AI Cobot S Series to Security Level 2 of IEC 62443-4-2, the standard setting security requirements for industrial control components. Techman says it also runs vulnerability handling, incident reporting and security updates over the product lifecycle, in line with the EU Cyber Resilience Act.
· Robotics Tomorrow
Teradyne has made an undisclosed investment in Bright Machines, whose software-defined Bright Factory platform runs more than 130 microfactories in over ten countries. The deal brings Teradyne robotic assembly, test-equipment loading and autonomous material movement into those lines, with Universal Robots cobots working next to Teradyne board testers.
· The Robot Report
Munich-founded RobCo says it is now valued at $1 billion, twice its level nine months ago, with Cherry Ventures and European Tech Collective joining backers such as Sequoia and Lightspeed. The company rents its Alfie robots for factory work as a service without upfront cost and paired the milestone with a share sale for long-serving staff.
· Robotics Tomorrow
Productive Robotics has introduced the OB7-AI, a seven-axis cobot that scans a machine's work area to locate parts, load and unload them and read the CNC screen to know when a cycle ends, without precise part placement. It targets machine tending in job shops, with labs and healthcare as further uses; price and payload were not given.
· Robotics Tomorrow
ANYbotics has made Shift 1.0 available worldwide to schedule and monitor ANYmal inspection fleets, flag anomalies from thermal, acoustic, visual and gas readings and turn them into maintenance work orders in tools such as SAP. The company cites more than 200 robot deployments carrying out hundreds of thousands of inspections a month.
· The Robot Report · Photo: Cvoellmy, CC BY-SA 4.0
The Association for Advancing Automation has released ANSI/A3 R15.08-3-2026, the third part of its industrial mobile robot safety series. It covers the user's side: risk assessment, change management, staff training and periodic inspections during daily operation, complementing Parts 1 and 2 on the robots and the systems built with them.
· Robotics Tomorrow
Inbolt has raised $12.5 million led by Shift4Good, taking its total funding to $34 million. Its 3D camera and AI software let arms from makers such as FANUC, ABB, KUKA and Universal Robots adapt to parts in real time; it counts over 200 robots in more than 100 factories and plans to expand in the US, Asia and data centers.
· Robotics Tomorrow
Retailer LPP's logistics arm has widened its partnership with Geekplus across two Polish sites, now running over 1,600 autonomous robots, including RoboShuttle units, with about 1.4 million storage locations up to roughly 12 metres high. The rollout was phased to keep operations running, with staff moving to supervision and exception handling.
· Robotics Tomorrow
An unnamed Fortune 100 heavy equipment manufacturer that already uses Cyngn DriveMod Tuggers has extended them to a second production workflow, moving components to an assembly line. The vehicles tow up to 12,000 pounds and navigate without magnetic tape or guide wires, a sign of repeat industrial demand for autonomous material handling.
· Robotics Tomorrow
NVIDIA has introduced an Open Agent Safety Platform made of the OpenShell runtime and a Sentry watchdog design, and Gecko Robotics is among over 100 organizations using it. Gecko is adding a policy enforcement layer to its inspection robots, including the Komodo system deployed with the U.S. Navy, to limit what autonomous AI agents can do on physical machines.
· The Robot Report
Amazon will invest more than $100 million in a 585,000 sq ft manufacturing facility in Greenwood, Indiana, expected by 2028 with 300 jobs. It will make components for the company's fulfillment and robotics systems using robotic welding and automated powder coating. Amazon says it has built over 1 million robots in the US so far.
· The Robot Report
Utah-based Autonomous Solutions Inc. and SoftBank Group are creating a joint venture to develop and sell autonomous systems for large infrastructure construction, with mixed fleets of haul trucks, dozers, loaders and compactors working together. SoftBank is funding the venture and has also invested $225 million in ASI, whose Mobius platform coordinates vehicles from different manufacturers.
· Robotics Tomorrow
Intrinsic, the Google AI robotics group, has published Intrinsic Core on GitHub, a set of ROS-compatible tools covering real-time control, 6D pose estimation, motion and grasp planning, simulation and camera calibration. It also released an open machine tending reference design, giving developers building blocks previously locked inside its commercial platform.
· Robohub
The International Federation of Robotics World Robotics 2026 report puts the global operational stock at 5 million industrial robots, up 9%, after more than 600,000 installations in 2025. China took 59% of new units, while the US passed Japan to become the second-largest market with about 38,500 installations. The IFR expects 655,000 installations in 2026.
· The Robot Report
Epson Robots has added the AX6 to its lineup, a carbon fiber cobot with 6 kg payload and 900 mm reach that uses power and force limiting to work near people after a risk assessment. It can be programmed without code or in Python through the RC-A1010 controller, meets ISO Class 5 cleanroom requirements, and is sold through Epson distributors.
· The Robot Report
