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New CAM software cuts robotic machining deployment

At Automate (Booth #4476), RoboDK will showcase RoboDK CAM, which generates robotic machining programs directly from CAD files. Designed for easy deployment, it cuts setup time by up to 40%. Live demonstrations will show users how to create collision-free robot motion straight from CAD data, eliminating manual line-by-line coding.
Learn more about RoboDK CAM.

AI Tools You Can Use: What is OpenClaw? How do I get it and use it?

OpenClaw is trending big time right now, but what is it? The YouTubers over at Create a Pro Website run through the basics of what you need to know and how to implement it. Basically, OpenClaw is a next-gen 24/7 AI assistant that lives on your computer and can perform actions for you. You talk to it through a chat app. You can set it up to do real work such as alert you to important emails, answer emails for you, manage your calendar and travel, and so much more. There is a great intro video here and also a longer, very thorough step-by-step video to setting up OpenClaw.
View the OpenClaw intro video.
View the OpenClaw setup video.

New! 6-digit programmable display/controller

Bristol Instruments has released the OM 403UNI Series displays/ controllers, allowing users to monitor two or three simultaneous functions. Configured via OM Link software or front-panel buttons, they feature four- or six-digit displays with +/-0.05% of f.s. range accuracy. They function as numeric/bar-graph displays, controllers, data recorders, or accumulators. Additionally, they detect and alert users to error conditions like broken sensor wires.
Learn more.

Mini edge AI systems for vision, generative AI

As enterprises transition from PoC to real-world edge AI deployment, Aetina has launched its Mini Series Edge AI systems. Powered by NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano and NX modules, these compact, fanless systems deliver high-performance vision and generative AI inference. Engineered for demanding industrial environments, they offer flexible camera connectivity, space-saving designs, and long-term reliability to accelerate smart infrastructure.
Learn more.

Thermal imaging on the quality control line

On a high-speed food and beverage line, what you can see is not always what is happening. Thermal imaging adds a different layer of control. Instead of relying on surface appearance, it measures heat distribution as seals are formed and products move through the line, providing continuous, 100% in-line inspection instead of just sampling.
Read the full article.

Built for the test bench, ready for the field

FUTEK's IDC150 Signal Conditioner packages high-performance signal conditioning in a rugged aluminum enclosure. Built for engineers needing accurate, synchronized data from strain gauge sensors, it fits prototyping and lab environments. The device connects seamlessly to existing setups and pairs with SENSIT software and Python APIs. It is ideal for compact, high-performance digital sensor evaluation.
Learn more.

Automotive lighting systems simplified, optimized

The new MLX81119 from Melexis is an 18-channel LIN RGB LED controller with an integrated DC/DC converter, designed to simplify and optimize automotive lighting systems. By generating the LED supply voltage locally on chip, this unit significantly reduces power dissipation, external components, and space requirements in increasingly dense vehicle applications such as door panels, dashboards, and charge-port lighting.
Learn more.

How healthy is your machine? Moisture-in-Oil Sensor

iST's Moisture-in-Oil Sensor is a compact, digital RH/T module that accurately and continuously monitors the water content in oils and fuels. This sensor does not simply measure the absolute water content -- it measures the relative saturation level in % RH or water activity aw in %. This means you get a direct picture of the current oil quality and can react in time. Applications include: marine engines and gearboxes, commercial and rail vehicles, wind turbines and generators, drilling and paper machines, and more. Eval kit available.
Learn more.

World's first native color lidar sensors

Ouster Rev8 features the world's first patented native color lidar sensors. For the first time, a single lidar sensor can understand road signs, interpret brake lights, or simply capture the richness of planet Earth in survey-grade, colorized maps. Based on patented Ouster Silicon with embedded Fujifilm color science, the L4 chip boasts 42.9 GMACs of processing power, detection of up to 20 trillion photons per sec, and a 40-kHz measurement rate with picosecond timing precision. Sees up to 200 m.
Learn more.

Real-world applications: 3D camera ensures precise aircraft cabin drilling

In modern aircraft production, precision is everything. In this application article, learn how an Ensenso 3D camera integrated into an automated process chain ensures accurate detection and alignment of drilling positions in aircraft cabin assembly using the CAD data of the aircraft frame.
Read the full article.

What are Onshape Custom Features?

Certified Onshape Professional Too Tall Toby explains how to supercharge your workflow using community-created tools. In this insightful tutorial, he dives into the world of FeatureScript -- the powerful coding language behind Onshape. Learn where to find new scripts and how to use them. Save time. Learn new skills, shortcuts, and maybe even better ways to do things. Incorporate Custom Features into your everyday work. Very useful.
View the video.

What can you do with touchless magnetic angle sensors?

Novotechnik has put together an informative video highlighting real-world applications for their RFC, RFE, and RSA Series touchless magnetic angle sensors. You may be surprised at the variety of off-highway, marine, material handling, and industrial uses. You'll learn how they work (using a Hall effect microprocessor to detect position) and their key advantages, including eliminated wear and tear on these non-mechanical components. We love when manufacturers provide such useful examples.
View the video.

What can the new Autodesk Inventor AI Assistant do for you?

Autodesk Assistant brings industry-specific context to help execute tasks and orchestrate actions across your 3D models -- not just answer questions. Designed to understand your workflows, Assistant appears as a dockable panel alongside your Inventor workspace and includes the ability to perform complex tasks or gather information from your designs without writing a single line of code. Find out what this new AI "colleague" can do for you.
Watch this informative Autodesk video.

Useful! Snap-together LED enclosure lighting

Seifert StripLite SL 4000 Series LED enclosure lighting provides bright illumination to 700 lumens. On/off switch and motion sensor models are available. Easily daisy chain up to 16 light strips. Magnetic or clip mounting. See video/info on website or contact Bristol Instruments for more information.
Learn about snap-together lighting.

Next-gen multi-touch panels

Beckhoff's Next line of multi-touch control panels and panel PCs is engineered for demanding human-machine interface and control tasks. These panels offer convenient operation with advanced multi-touch technology, a high-quality look and feel, anti-glare and anti-ghosting effects, and a wide choice of formats (from 7 to 23.8 in.) and options. A main draw is the line's attractive pricing.
Learn more.

Researchers help video gamers play in the cloud without guzzling gigabytes

Gamers might one day be able to enjoy the same graphics-intensive fast-action video games they play on their gaming consoles or personal computers from mobile devices without guzzling gigabytes, thanks to a new tool developed by researchers at Duke University and Microsoft Research.

Named "Kahawai" after the Hawaiian word for stream, the tool delivers graphics and gameplay on par with conventional cloud-gaming setups for a fraction of the bandwidth.

"That's a huge win, especially if your cellphone plan has a data cap," said Duke computer scientist Landon Cox, who helped develop the approach with his graduate student Eduardo Cuervo, now at Microsoft, and Alec Wolman, a Microsoft researcher.

"You'll be able to play a lot longer," Cox said.

Nearly half of today's mobile users play games on their smartphones and tablets. Not long ago, most of them stuck to mobile games like Angry Birds or Candy Crush Saga. But thanks to high-resolution touchscreens and powerful processors, more gamers are using pocket-size devices to play hardcore games once reserved for high-end desktops or long hours on the couch with Xbox and PlayStation consoles.

The way it's currently done is called "cloud gaming." Similar to video streaming services like Netflix, cloud gaming lets gamers stream high-end video games from the Web anywhere, any time, on any device.

Under cloud gaming, it doesn't matter whether a smartphone or tablet meets the game's minimum system requirements. Player inputs such as touchscreen swipes and taps are sent over the Internet to a remote server, and the server does all the heavy lifting -- on the order of billions of calculations a second -- so the mobile device doesn't have to.

Cloud gaming has its drawbacks, though. For one, transmitting high-resolution graphics and audio fast enough for smooth gameplay can eat up a lot of data quickly. Playing video games like Halo or Tomb Raider on a smartphone would blow through a 2-GB monthly plan in a few hours.

Cox, Cuervo, Wolman, and their collaborators think they may have come up with a solution.

The researchers presented Kahawai at the 13th International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys) in Florence, Italy, on May 19.

To reduce the amount of data that remote servers have to send during a game, Kahawai relies on a technique called "collaborative rendering."

While conventional cloud gaming relies on a remote server to compute all of the game's 3D graphics, collaborative rendering lightens the load by letting the mobile device's graphics processing unit (GPU) do some of the work.

The task of quickly generating fine-grained details -- such as subtle changes in texture and shading at speeds of 60 frames per second -- is still left to the remote server. But collaborative rendering lets the mobile device generate a rough sketch of each frame, or a few high-detail sketches of select frames, while the remote server fills in the gaps.

The researchers integrated Kahawai into the software behind Doom 3, a futuristic first-person shooter game about a space marine struggling to stay alive on Mars.

Compared with conventional cloud gaming setups, Kahawai delivered the same visual quality while using one-sixth of the bandwidth.

In performance trials with 50 hardcore gamers who spend an average of two hours a day playing video games, players reached similar scores with both techniques, with no difference in response times -- a critical issue for fast-paced games where any lag adds crucial milliseconds between pressing the "shoot" button and killing the enemy, for example.

Kahawai even allows users to play offline, albeit with lower-quality graphics.

"You essentially get the same gaming experience, but you save a lot of data," Cox said.

"Games are a natural place to start understanding how collaborative rendering can work, but any graphics-intensive application could potentially benefit from Kahawai, from 3D medical imaging to computer-aided design software used by architects and engineers."

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (CNS-0747283).

Citation: "Kahawai: High-Quality Mobile Gaming Using GPU Offload," E. Cuervo, A. Wolman, L. Cox et al. Proceedings of the 13th annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services, May 18-22, 2015, Florence, Italy. www.cs.duke.edu/~lpcox/mobi093f-cuervoA.pdf.

Source: Duke University

Published June 2015

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