Welcome to this installment of EE Classroom on Factory Automation
The move to the fourth Industrial Revolution and its subset known as Industry 4.0 has occurred in less than half the time it took from the first to the second to the third. It’s not traveling at the speed of light but to designers, manufacturers, suppliers, factory owners, and the accompanying supply chain, it can feel just as disorienting. Simply communicating information throughout the factory floor — let alone to the cloud — requires swimming through standards that have not yet been defined across product manufacturers while wading through a sea of multiple industrial communications protocols that continue to evolve. Designing for and then implementing the robots, sensors, and interface solutions that comprise much of factory automation are, like so much of our fast-moving technology, skillsets that need to be frequently enhanced.
Successful factory automation hinges on the adoption of many new technologies, and there is no adoption without understanding. This classroom delivers a bit of ongoing education that can help you achieve that by providing tutorials around various test procedures required for measuring interoperability, wireline, and wireless transmission, as well as test steps to meet pre-compliance EMC. "Course offerings" include basics of EMI/RFI and a look into distinctions of machine learning, AI, and neural networks. You can also take advantage of the groundwork already available with reference designs addressing device applications in vision sensing for inline inspection, programmable logic control, laser driving for LiDAR, and system solutions for integrated multi-protocol industrial Ethernet communication.
In other words, you are not alone on the factory floor.
