Robotics Blog Pow­ered By ArtiMinds

Who are the peo­ple shap­ing robotics at ArtiMinds every day? In our “3 Ques­tions To…” series, we reveal more about the team and intro­duce the faces behind the scene.

Den­nis Nocke has been Senior Sales Man­ager at ArtiMinds for almost a year. He sup­ports cus­tomers in dis­cov­er­ing new ways of tak­ing man­ual processes into a new era through the use of sen­sor-adap­tive indus­trial robotics. He describes him­self as prag­matic, hon­est and cre­ative. And shares his motto with us, which should make you think, but also smile a lit­tle: “Never look down on some­one unless you admire their shoes.”

1. What are your tasks at ArtiMinds?
My tasks are var­ied and diverse. The focus is of course on sup­port­ing and main­tain­ing reg­u­lar con­tact with our exist­ing cus­tomers to under­stand their needs and ensure that their require­ments are met. I also iden­tify and acquire new cus­tomers by attend­ing trade fairs, con­fer­ences and other net­work­ing events. I also enjoy being on stage from time to time. I work closely with other depart­ments such as prod­uct devel­op­ment, mar­ket­ing and cus­tomer ser­vice to ensure a seam­less cus­tomer experience.

2. What do you enjoy most about your work?
The mix­ture of office work and trav­el­ing to visit cus­tomers makes my job par­tic­u­larly var­ied. I used to travel mainly in south­ern Ger­many, but at ArtiMinds I now have the oppor­tu­nity to explore other parts of Ger­many and Europe. This extended travel gives me the chance to get to know new cus­tomers and places and to broaden my pro­fes­sional hori­zons con­sid­er­ably on the one hand and to work directly with cus­tomers and develop inno­v­a­tive solu­tions on the other.

3. What do you do to bal­ance your pro­fes­sional life?
I find men­tal bal­ance by hik­ing with my fam­ily or stand-up pad­dling on the water. Work­ing in the gar­den pro­vides a phys­i­cal balance.

Robot projects are becom­ing increas­ingly com­plex and at the same time effi­cient imple­men­ta­tion is more impor­tant than ever. Well-thought-out plan­ning is essen­tial to ensure that imple­men­ta­tion is not unnec­es­sar­ily pro­tracted and does not cost too much in terms of mon­e­tary and human resources. And before invest­ing in hard­ware, it is impor­tant to exam­ine the gen­eral process´ suit­abil­ity for automation.
The answer to those chal­lenges are fea­si­bil­ity studies.

But how do you carry out a fea­si­bil­ity study? And what are the ben­e­fits of the analy­sis? In our blog post, we show why fea­si­bil­ity stud­ies are nec­es­sary, what steps they involve and what ben­e­fits they offer.

ArtiMinds and Eber­hard AG have joined forces to pro­vide elec­tron­ics man­u­fac­tur­ers with a fully inte­grated automa­tion solu­tion for THT assem­bly. This strate­gic part­ner­ship com­bines ArtiMinds’ exten­sive exper­tise in robotics with Eberhard’s expe­ri­ence in the design and man­u­fac­ture of elec­tronic assem­bly systems.
Heinz-Georg Geissler, Direc­tor Cus­tomer Jour­ney & Autho­rized Rep­re­sen­ta­tive at Eber­hard AG, explains:
“Com­bin­ing our exper­tise enables us to offer a turnkey solu­tion that is tech­no­log­i­cally lead­ing and eco­nom­i­cally attrac­tive. Our cus­tomers ben­e­fit from a com­plete solu­tion that comes from a sin­gle source, from the sys­tem through to process devel­op­ment and programming.”

At SPS – Smart Pro­duc­tion Solu­tions in Nurem­berg in Hall 7a, Stand 141, ArtiMinds Robotics and LMI Tech­nolo­gies will be pre­sent­ing an advanced robotic automa­tion solu­tion for sen­sor-based assem­bly of cables and con­nec­tors as well as new pos­si­bil­i­ties for process data analy­sis with ArtiMinds LAR.
We have a lim­ited con­tin­gent of free day passes for your visit to the trade fair. Sim­ply send us a short email to receive your ticket.

We show which robotics fund­ing pro­grams are cur­rently avail­able, what projects are funded and to what extent, and how you can apply.

The lat­est ArtiMinds RPS ver­sion 1.30 is now avail­able for installation.

The update includes new inte­gra­tion and sup­port for addi­tional robot mod­els from ABB and KUKA as well as laser scan­ners from the man­u­fac­tur­ers Micro-Epsilon (scan­CON­TROL), LMI Tech­nolo­gies (GOCA­TOR) and Keyence (LJ). In addi­tion, pro­gram­ming with 3D points has been expanded and improved.

As always, you can find the entire change log with all changes and bug fixes in the ArtiMinds RPS directory.

The release is avail­able via down­load or online update.

Despite cobots being val­ued in the indus­try for their adapt­abil­ity and ease of use, Automa­tion 4.0 shows that con­ven­tional indus­trial robots offer sig­nif­i­cant advan­tages, espe­cially for small and medium- sized companies.
This leads to our myth check cobot vs. indus­trial robot: What are the advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages for SMEs? Which robot should you choose?

Here is the answer!

Who are the peo­ple shap­ing robotics at ArtiMinds every day? In our “3 Ques­tions To…” series, we reveal more about the team and intro­duce the faces behind the scene.

Today we are speak­ing with a true ArtiMinds vet­eran: Sven Kiesser.  With nearly a decade of expe­ri­ence, he knows RPS inside and out. As a key mem­ber of both soft­ware devel­op­ment and tech­ni­cal sup­port, he val­ues his dual role for its advan­tages. Many cus­tomer inquiries demand deep tech­ni­cal knowl­edge to address com­plex ques­tions and issues effec­tively, ensur­ing quick and detailed responses.

1. What do you enjoy most about your work?
That is absolutely the vari­ety! I often have to famil­iar­ize myself with new prob­lems and develop inno­v­a­tive solu­tions. This requires con­tin­u­ous devel­op­ment of my skills and allows me to con­stantly learn new things. True to my motto: “If some­thing is too com­pli­cated, learn it.” Fur­ther­more there’s the great team I work with. I par­tic­u­larly appre­ci­ate our lunch breaks together, where we talk and laugh a lot, even out­side of work-related topics.

2. What does a typ­i­cal work­ing week look like for you?
In my role as soft­ware devel­oper, I am guided by our back­log and the fea­ture list for the next release, using clas­sic soft­ware devel­op­ment processes. Cus­tomer prob­lems always take pri­or­ity, which means that my work­ing week often has to be flex­i­ble. This approach allows us to respond quickly and effec­tively to cus­tomer requests while con­tin­u­ously improv­ing the soft­ware. This means that if a bug occurs or there is a fea­ture request, these can be dealt with imme­di­ately by me or the devel­op­ment team.

3. What do you do to bal­ance your pro­fes­sional life?
In recent years, I’ve become a big fan of long-dis­tance hik­ing, Te Araroa trail for exam­ple, and pho­tog­ra­phy. Through both, you focus very strongly on things com­pletely away from every­day life and con­stantly dis­cover and learn new things, which helps me to clear my head.

Would you like to increase the level of automa­tion in your pro­duc­tion and auto­mate pro­duc­tion processes with robots or opti­mize exist­ing robot appli­ca­tions?

Take advan­tage of the free ini­tial con­sul­ta­tion with one of our robotics experts, in which we will take a close look at your processes, iden­tify the poten­tial of robot automa­tion in your pro­duc­tion and work with you to eval­u­ate new ideas for cost-effec­tive implementation.
Let´s get in touch to dis­cuss your needs in detail.

While humans can see and feel thanks to their eyes and hands, robots do not have these abil­i­ties per se. A deci­sive fac­tor in being able to exploit the full poten­tial of indus­trial robots is there­fore the use of highly devel­oped sen­sors in com­bi­na­tion with intel­li­gent soft­ware that enables data pro­cess­ing and evaluation.
In this blog post, we take a look at the wide range of pos­si­bil­i­ties and appli­ca­tions this opens up for robots.

ArtiMinds LAR (Learn­ing & Ana­lyt­ics for Robots) has become indis­pens­able as a data analy­sis and opti­miza­tion tool in pro­gram­ming robot sys­tems. Now, it is also pos­si­ble to retro­fit deployed robots or exist­ing sys­tems that have not been pro­grammed with ArtiMinds RPS for data acqui­si­tion with ArtiMinds LAR (“LAR Stand­alone”).
This makes it easy to ana­lyze and mon­i­tor robot processes, for exam­ple, to inter­vene at an early stage in the event of drift­ing posi­tion­ing and sta­bi­lize the process or to carry out data-based optimizations.
Do you have processes that reg­u­larly cause prob­lems and error cases? Con­tact us, and we will be happy to advise you per­son­ally on the inte­gra­tion and use of LAR Standalone.

The lat­est ArtiMinds RPS ver­sion 1.28 is now avail­able for installation.

The update includes the lat­est inte­gra­tions of the ABB robot model GoFa CRB 15000, all ABB robots with Omni­Core con­troller ver­sion, the FANUC robot model CRX-25iA as well as the sup­port of the force func­tion­al­ity for CRX cobots. In addi­tion, it is now pos­si­ble to use Via-Points that are com­puted dur­ing pro­gram run­time (Move Cir­cu­lar Tem­plate) and there are exten­sions to the CAD2Path fea­ture.

You can find the entire change log with all changes and bug fixes in the ArtiMinds RPS directory.

The release is avail­able via down­load or online update

Who are the peo­ple who are shap­ing robotics at ArtiMinds every day? The for­mat “3 Ques­tions to…” reveals more and intro­duces the faces behind the team.

Today we are talk­ing to Nico­las Sigonney, who has been part of the Automa­tion Engi­neer­ing team since 2019. His main task is to develop automa­tion solu­tions for indus­trial processes. As every­thing at ArtiMinds revolves around robotics, this nat­u­rally involves robot automa­tion and appli­ca­tions that need the inte­gra­tion of a PLCs, force-torque sen­sors, cam­eras and/or grippers.

1. What do you enjoy most about your work?
I find the vari­ety of my tasks very excit­ing because I deal with the con­cep­tion, imple­men­ta­tion and val­i­da­tion of automa­tion solu­tions. There are always dif­fer­ent ways to solve an automa­tion project. It moti­vates me to see after project com­ple­tion that the ideas and approaches work as planned and that each devel­op­ment step is an impor­tant piece of the puz­zle for a suc­cess­ful end result.

2. What does a typ­i­cal work­ing week look like for you?
At the begin­ning of the week, there is a reg­u­lar inter­nal team coor­di­na­tion meet­ing to dis­cuss the sta­tus of ongo­ing projects. For active projects, I then have indi­vid­ual meet­ings with clients to present them the progress and mile­stones. Accord­ing to the dead­lines and spec­i­fi­ca­tions to be met, I spend the remain­ing time work­ing on the cus­tomer projects and devel­op­ing and val­i­dat­ing suit­able automa­tion solutions.

3. What do you do to bal­ance your pro­fes­sional life?
I reg­u­larly play bas­ket­ball in a recre­ational team and try to explore the under­wa­ter world by scuba div­ing. Apart from that, I’m a fam­ily per­son and love spend­ing time with them.

Robotics is a key theme at this years HAN­NOVER FAIR. Robots of all shapes and sizes – from indus­trial robots and cobots to autonomous mobile robots – are on dis­play through­out the exhi­bi­tion grounds. A spe­cial high­light is the Appli­ca­tion Park in Hall 5, where expe­ri­enced robotics com­pa­nies and start-ups in par­tic­u­lar will be demon­strat­ing the wide range of appli­ca­tions for robots and the inter­ac­tion between humans, machines and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Part­ner of the Appli­ca­tion Park is the Ger­man Robotics Asso­ci­a­tion (DRV).

You will find ArtiMinds at the Appli­ca­tion Park in hall 5 at booth B28-11. Get a free ticket for your visit.

Who are the peo­ple who are shap­ing robotics at ArtiMinds every day? The for­mat “3 Ques­tions to…” reveals more and intro­duces the faces behind the team.

We start the year with Flo­rian Geike. Flo­rian, who will be cel­e­brat­ing his two-year jubilee at ArtiMinds in a few days, is an Insides Sales Man­ager and forms the impor­tant inter­face between tech­nol­ogy, sales and admin­is­tra­tion. The core of his work is the prepa­ra­tion of tech­ni­cal project pro­pos­als in col­lab­o­ra­tion with our Automa­tion Engi­neer­ing team. At the same time, he deals with issues such as con­tract reviews, report­ing and tra­di­tional order pro­cess­ing and fol­low-up. And how does he describe him­self in three words? Cor­rect, sar­cas­tic, open-minded – sounds like an excit­ing mix:

1. What do you enjoy most about your work?
I work closely with our project and soft­ware engi­neers, par­tic­u­larly when prepar­ing tech­ni­cal offers, and trans­fer their ideas into com­mer­cial offers and ser­vice descrip­tions, i.e. I always work directly on the tech­no­log­i­cal pulse of ArtiMinds. Orig­i­nally hav­ing only a com­mer­cial back­ground, this gives me the oppor­tu­nity to acquire new knowl­edge in the field of robotics every day. This is chal­leng­ing, but has great advan­tages. It makes my daily work in this demand­ing envi­ron­ment eas­ier, so that I can work inde­pen­dently on my own exter­nal cus­tomer projects and also sup­port the sales team at trade fairs.

2. What does a typ­i­cal work­ing week look like for you?
The work­ing week is packed with a wide vari­ety of inter­nal and exter­nal appoint­ments. I can’t plan ahead for indi­vid­ual days in the long term. I have to react quickly to require­ments and famil­iar­ize myself with new projects. A plan that was still in place last Fri­day may no longer be valid the fol­low­ing Tues­day. Jump­ing between count­less top­ics and issues is chal­leng­ing, but I per­son­ally really enjoy it.

3. What do you do to bal­ance your pro­fes­sional life?
I love play­ing snooker and am also a vol­un­teer mem­ber of the board of Snook­er­club 147 e.V. in Karl­sruhe. I am also a sport man­ager and rep­re­sent the inter­ests of our ath­letes to the state and national asso­ci­a­tions. On the one hand, my train­ing pro­gram is a bal­ance after work dur­ing the week. On the other hand, I often travel around the coun­try at week­ends for leagues and tournaments.

The lat­est ArtiMinds RPS ver­sion 1.27 is now avail­able for installation.

The update includes the new inte­gra­tion and sup­port of the UR20 robot model and MicroEp­silon laser scan­ner for KUKA, new tem­plates for work­ing with laser scan­ners (as part of the vision tem­plate fam­ily) and improved options for cre­at­ing paths on CAD model surfaces.

You can find the entire change log with all changes and bug fixes in the ArtiMinds RPS directory.

The release is avail­able via down­load or online update

The new year is just 11 days old and we already have our first trade fair announce­ment for you:

We cor­dially invite you to all about automa­tion in Friedrichshafen on March 5 and 6, 2024. At the trade show, you will expe­ri­ence sys­tems, com­po­nents, soft­ware and engi­neer­ing for indus­trial automa­tion and indus­trial communication.
Get your free ticket and visit us at our booth B2-150, right next to the Ger­man Robotics Asso­ci­a­tion (DRV).

The lat­est ArtiMinds RPS ver­sion 1.26 is now avail­able for installation.

The update includes, among other things, The update includes the inte­gra­tion of the Fanuc robot model M-10iD/16S, a new func­tion in all wiz­ards to switch between teach­ing with the real and teach­ing with the vir­tual robot as well as improved per­for­mance of sim­u­la­tion, com­pi­la­tion and load­ing of project load­ing and the auto­matic enabled data stream­ing to ArtiMinds LAR after load­ing a project.

You can find the entire change log with all changes and bug fixes in the ArtiMinds RPS directory.

The release is avail­able via down­load or online update.

ArtiMinds’ soft­ware prod­ucts for robot automa­tion are used by our cus­tomers in a wide vari­ety of appli­ca­tions: from mechan­i­cal assem­bly, sur­face pro­cess­ing or qual­ity con­trol to lab­o­ra­tory automation.

Our robotics engi­neer­ing ser­vices, with which we sup­port our cus­tomers indi­vid­u­ally, are just as diverse as the appli­ca­tion sectors.

What espe­cially do cus­tomers value about our exper­tise? And why do they no longer want to pro­gram robots with­out ArtiMinds?

In this video they will tell us.

Who are the peo­ple who are shap­ing robotics at ArtiMinds every day? The for­mat “3 Ques­tions to…” reveals more and intro­duces the faces behind the team.

Today, our Sales Direc­tor Roman Klingl is our inter­view part­ner. He describes him­self as an active, com­mu­nica­tive and pur­pose­ful per­son, so he def­i­nitely has the ideal qual­i­ties for his posi­tion at ArtiMinds. His cur­rent focus lies on expand­ing the sales team and imple­ment­ing a scal­able sales struc­ture. He is happy being able to count on the know-how and sup­port of his team at all times.

1. What do you enjoy most about your work?
My motto is “Think in solu­tions!”. That’s why I love work­ing with peo­ple who have the desire to make a dif­fer­ence. And that is def­i­nitely the case at ArtiMinds. Every day, together we turn ideas into real­ity and unleash pos­i­tive change.

2. What fas­ci­nates you about your job?
I am fas­ci­nated by the fact that we are oper­at­ing in a highly dynamic future mar­ket. It’s not just about sim­ple robotics, but about the demand­ing chal­lenge of mak­ing sen­sor-adap­tive robot appli­ca­tions “fly”. This requires a high degree of tech­ni­cal finesse and is any­thing but triv­ial. How­ever, with our inno­v­a­tive soft­ware prod­ucts, our experts man­age to make this com­plex­ity man­age­able for cus­tomers. That is some­thing that truly excites me.

3. What do you do to bal­ance your pro­fes­sional life?
To find a bal­ance, I like to retreat for walks in the for­est or the moun­tains. These moments, together with my wife and our dog, allow me to clear my head and recharge my batteries.

When pro­gram­ming com­plex processes, it can some­times become quite con­fus­ing, espe­cially when tem­plates in ArtiMinds RPS are orga­nized by hier­ar­chies.

In order to still be able to keep track of the pro­gram, there is now a new func­tion called ‘Pro­gram Visu­al­iza­tion’! With it, you can either effort­lessly visu­al­ize the flow of indi­vid­ual pro­gram sec­tions, i.e. sub-processes, or even cre­ate a com­pre­hen­si­ble overview of the entire pro­gram and export it graphically.

How to per­form a pro­gram visu­al­iza­tion and which options you can set is revealed in our cur­rent TechTip.

The short­age of skilled work­ers has become a burn­ing issue in recent years. The prob­lem­atic sit­u­a­tion affects almost all indus­tries and threat­ens the coun­tries` eco­nomic growth and inno­v­a­tive strength.
The use of robots, i.e. robo­t­i­za­tion, is increas­ingly being pro­claimed as a viable solu­tion for the future.

But do robots really help to address the short­age of skilled workers?

Reduc­ing man­ual labor, increas­ing automa­tion: when it comes to flex­i­ble parts such as cables, wires or con­nec­tors, many com­pa­nies have a hard time.

In this new free webi­nar series our appli­ca­tion experts explain, what kind of indus­trial automa­tion solu­tions for the han­dling and assem­bly of cables already exist, what cost sav­ings are pos­si­ble, why robots in com­bi­na­tion with sen­sors play a key role and how appli­ca­tions can be imple­mented effi­ciently and eco­nom­i­cally profitable.

The webi­nar spe­cial edi­tion starts on Novem­ber 08.

From Octo­ber 10 to 13, Motek will be held together with Bon­d­expo in Stuttgart. The focus is on indus­trial pro­duc­tion as a com­plete sys­tem. The trade fair maps the com­plete process chain for eco­nom­i­cal pro­duc­tion and assem­bly automation.
At our booth 7103 in hall 7 with our part­ner next robotics, we will show how ArtiMinds RPS and LAR sup­port the robot-based automa­tion of grip­ping and insert­ing flex­i­ble cables.
You would like to talk to our automa­tion experts at Motek, but don’t have a ticket yet? Use the fol­low­ing but­ton to reg­is­ter directly for your free day pass!

The lat­est ArtiMinds RPS ver­sion 1.24 is now avail­able for installation.

The update includes, among other things, the inte­gra­tion of new robot mod­els from Kuka and Fanuc, as well as soft­ware enhance­ments like a new export func­tion­al­ity “Pro­gram to Visu­al­iza­tion” for cre­at­ing a flow­chart of the log­i­cal pro­gram struc­ture and a new popup edi­tor for quickly chang­ing the tem­plate tool.

You can find the entire change log with all changes and bug fixes in the ArtiMinds RPS directory.

The release is avail­able via down­load or online update.

Who are the peo­ple who are shap­ing robotics at ArtiMinds every day? The for­mat “3 Ques­tions to…” reveals more and intro­duces the faces behind the team.

Today, Oliver Kar­ren­bauer is our inter­view part­ner. True to his motto “No prob­lem is too hard to solve”, the soft­ware devel­oper, who describes him­self as reli­able, ana­lyt­i­cal and per­sis­tent, espe­cially loves chal­leng­ing cus­tomer projects. He has been part of the team for more than seven years and is respon­si­ble for mak­ing it eas­ier for our cus­tomers to work with robots.

1. What fas­ci­nates you about your job?
What fas­ci­nates me most are the dif­fer­ent robot sys­tems and the diverse appli­ca­tions that we solve for our cus­tomers. Every day is dif­fer­ent and brings new chal­lenges to overcome.

2. How does a typ­i­cal work week look like for you?
A typ­i­cal work week can be very var­ied. Some­times I am in close direct exchange with our cus­tomers to imple­ment spe­cific soft­ware solu­tions. On other days, I focus on devel­op­ing new fea­tures in our ArtiMinds RPS soft­ware or work inten­sively on solv­ing dif­fi­cult prob­lems. Every week brings new tasks and chal­lenges, which makes my work­day excit­ing and dynamic.

3. What do you do to bal­ance your pro­fes­sional life?
I like to put on my sports shoes to go run­ning. Whether to relax or to pre­pare for an upcom­ing marathon, run­ning helps me clear my head and recharge my batteries.

Debur­ring Expo, the lead­ing trade fair for debur­ring tech­nolo­gies and pre­ci­sion sur­faces, will take place from Octo­ber 10 to 12 in Karl­sruhe. At our joint booth with SHL Automa­tisierung­stech­nik in hall 1, stand 412, we will present the lat­est tech­nolo­gies and processes for robot-based automa­tion of debur­ring and sur­face fin­ish­ing processes.

Get your free trade show ticket – we are look­ing for­ward to your visit!