New prospects for the automation and composites industry

Fibre composite materials, especially those that use carbon fibres, have enormous potential in the lightweight-design sector. These materials help to improve performance, increase safety and improve environmental compatibility, especially in the sectors for aircraft, automotive and machine manufacturing.

Because production costs are still extremely high due to a lack of automation systems, developing manufacturing techniques that are suitable for mass production has become extremely important. This sector was represented at AUTOMATICA 2010 for the first time ever along with international partners JEC Composites, the leading organisation in the European fibre-composites industry with a network of 200,000 specialists, and SAMPE (Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering).

In addition to its own exhibition sector, i.e. "Composite City by JEC", the two-day SAMPE Congress was held at the same time as AUTOMATICA 2010.

The extensive range of supporting events at AUTOMATICA 2010 also included the AUTOMATICA Know-how Lounge in front of Hall B1. The Know-how Lounge featured theme days that shed light on the following topics: Asia's future markets Machine vision Lifecycle cost analysis

Seminars, lectures and workshops gave exhibitors and visitors plenty of opportunities to gather and exchange information.

The double conference ISR/ROBOTIK 2010, which is the most important robotics conference in the world, was a special highlight at AUTOMATICA 2010. The conference, which consisted of the International Symposium on Robotics 2010 (ISR) and ROBOTIK 2010, had320 participants and was a complete success.

The latest findings and product innovations in the sectors for service and industrial robotics, components and accessories were presented at the conference. The lectures focused on technical challenges and solutions, new trends and automation potential. Participants also had a chance to hold discussions with colleagues from the research and development sector and exchange information about automation in production with experts from the robotics industry.

Award ceremony at ISR /Robotik 2010

The winners of the Engelberger Award and the IERA Award were honoured at a banquet on June 8. The winners of the Engelberger Award were Heinz Dieter Schunk, Schunk GmbH & Co. KG, and Scott Deming, Corning Incorporated.

In addition, the IERA Award was presented to Univ.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. Alexander Verl, Fraunhofer IPA for his "Inline Measurement Robots – Robots Get the Precision for Car Body Inspection" project.

For the fourth time, AUTOMATICA brought exhibitors together with future apprentices on the last day of the fair. Small and large companies informed150 interested high-school students about future prospects and gave them a look at their companies and innovations.

"Pursue a career": AUTOMATICA 2010 – the career platform

The "Pursue a Career" stand, which was organised in conjunction with "VDI nachrichten", revolved around the topic of jobs and personal advice. A number of entry-level jobs, apprenticeships, internships and dissertation positions awaited interested visitors at the AUTOMATICA Job Exchange.

Please find any events accompanying AUTOMATICA 2010 here.

Several of the presentations and abstracts from the lecture program 'Automatin in Dialogue' at AUTOMATICA 2010 are available and can be downloaded free of charge here.

	Automotive/Metalworking Industry — Challenge of growing model diversity and smaller batch sizes
	Future Trends — Challenges for robotics
	Future Markets – From the food industry to medical technology
	Automotive — Automotive suppliers profit from intelligent automation
	New Energies — Automation for photovoltaics and e-mobility
	Automation 2.0 — Comprehensive and global