Engineering Industry Insights & Trends

The march of automation and manufacturing has always been associated with the fear of job loss. The rapid advancement of industrial robotics in the last 20 years has created a cottage industry of speculation over the economic and societal shift caused by a reduced need for workers on the assembly line. US manufacturing workers live in a high wage nation, and are especially vulnerable…do they fear...

The Trump Administration’s tariff regime has sent shockwaves around the manufacturing world, and has made ”re-shoring" the new word in American manufacturing. Machinery, however, is a global commodity, and some of the highest technology machinery is from European and Asian sources that previously enjoyed an open trading relationship with the US. Dr. Carlo Angelo Bocci is the Italian Trade Agency T...

Self-driving cars, drones, humanoid robots. They are all over the news and popular culture today and are technologies that need a critical capability: navigation. It’s been true for thousands of years, and for most of human history, dead reckoning was a rare skill, and a black art. “Shooting” stars with the sextant is still an option for sport sailors, but today, repeatability and accuracy have ne...

Drones are everywhere today, from suburban backyards to battlefields. In between these extremes is a huge market for useful pilotless aircraft for remote inspection, payload delivery and remote sensing. SwissDrones is one of a new breed of small aerospace companies that use advanced design and development tools to deliver complex projects quickly and cost effectively. Their medium payload drone he...

Manufacturing engineers call it the “death zone”. Some call it the “scaling conundrum”. Once a design is finalized, and a prototype made, it’s frequently expensive and difficult to create the pilot runs and small volume production that’s essential to test market and validate a new product. It’s far too expensive to tool up for mass production of a part or device based on only a single prototype, b...

COVID 19 generated an unprecedented demand for remote work and created a demand for mass collaboration tools that let designers work as unified teams, without a physical presence. For many tasks, it’s relatively simple, but in the architecture, engineering and construction space, substantially different systems, designs and skills must be sequenced correctly to deliver a project on time and on bud...

Building engineering is a unique form of craft and science, blending multiple materials, processes and design methodologies. Cabling a modern structure means coping with power and signal conductors which must be routed efficiently through complex structures, a 3D puzzle which challenges even the most experienced engineers. Toronto-based Augment is an AI powered generates optimized layouts without...

Few emerging technologies have generated as much interest, research and concern as AI, and in the engineering space, it’s no different. It is now clear that AI represents a tool of unprecedented power to streamline engineering workflows, but at the rapid pace of development, it is quickly evolving into something more. The art and science of engineering is now changing in real time, as agentic AI n...

Mechatronics blends mechanical engineering, electronics, control systems, and computing into one intelligent system. Without it, self-parking cars, smart thermostats, and precision robotics simply won’t work reliably in the real world. This blend of mechanical systems, electronics and software has blurred the lines between traditional engineering disciplines, especially with the rapid and ongoing...

Edge computing is the logical extension of the smart sensor technology which drastically improved control of manufacturing processes in the 1980s and ‘90s. Moving the computational burden down to the plant floor has multiple benefits, but it has also created new challenges. Where does artificial intelligence fit in? What does process control really mean when human interaction in manufacturing tech...

Wide band gap semiconductors like gallium nitride appear to be a case where you can have your cake and eat it too. With a high breakdown voltage, and a higher switching frequency compared to silicon, the technology would lend itself to multiple applications, but GaN devices also offer higher power density and high thermal conductivity, making them uniquely adaptable to both power and signal applic...

Minimally invasive, catheter-based surgical procedures have drastically improved outcomes and recovery times in critical procedures such as heart valve replacement, and as the technology advances, new procedures are evolving which promise the same benefits enjoyed by cardiac patients to patients suffering from renal, prostate and other diseases. The shape memory alloy nitinol is a key technology i...

In 1962, an animated sitcom debuted on television called the Jetsons. It predicted a future with extensive automation of every aspect of life, from cleaning the floors to operating factories. Much of it has come true, with extensive robotic operation now commonplace in manufacturing, supply chain services and increasingly, in medicine. But that humanoid robot as personal servant remains elusive. W...

20 years ago, many mechanical engineering experts predicted that hydraulics were dead. Rapid advancements in electric linear and rotary actuators promised an oil-less future, with cleaner, quieter and more energy efficient equipment, with lower overall cost of ownership and operating costs. Despite considerable advancements in electric actuator technology, hydraulics haven’t gone anywhere, and don...

This episode is brought to you by Parker. Sustainability is no longer marketing hype, it’s a fundamental part of the way machines are engineered in the 21st century. The electric vehicle revolution is in full swing in the automotive industry, but internal combustion engines power a lot more than on-the-road vehicles. Equipment in the mining, construction and agriculture sectors is big, powerful an...

Computer-aided manufacturing has been around in one form or another since the 1960s, but the ability to program CNC equipment was only the beginning. Today, manufacturers are expected to aggregate, integrate and act on vast amounts of data generated on the shop floor, as well as from multiple departments within the organization, and on down the supply chain. Low-cost general-purpose robotics is wi...

Engineering.com senior editor Michael Ouellette covers global manufacturing, including the hottest topic today, artificial intelligence. But is it all it’s cracked up to be? Ouellete is skeptical, and pulls no punches in conversation with host of the Industry Insights & Trends podcast edition, Jim Anderton . * * * engineering.com produces a number of video programs for the engineering professi...

Today’s advanced design software often includes the capability to do advanced computational tasks that ere traditionally done by physical testing. The original engineering methodology was always iterative. Design, test, break and redesign has been the hallmark of engineering for millennia, but a new generation of advanced tools suggest a future where the physical fit and test functions are replace...

It’s been said that additive manufacturing is the newest 25-year-old technology in industry. The science-fiction quality of complex part making from powder or liquid precursors does seem like magic, but it has evolved from a laboratory curiosity to a serious manufacturing technology. The aerospace industry has fully embraced 3D printing, and many components are now designed for it, and can’t be ma...