
Kuka - the first figures after the takeover
Last year, the Chinese Midea Group acquired over 95% of Kuka shares. The Augsburg-based company has now published its first figures following the takeover - for the fourth quarter and for 2016 as a whole.
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Last year, the Chinese Midea Group acquired over 95% of Kuka shares. The Augsburg-based company has now published its first figures following the takeover - for the fourth quarter and for 2016 as a whole.
Audi is working on a new production concept to get to grips with the rapidly increasing number of vehicle variants in car manufacturing: moving away from assembly line production towards modular assembly. Mobile solutions play a key role here.

ABB - 4th quarter and full year 2016
The ABB Group has announced its figures for the 2016 financial year: Although growth in order intake and sales was recorded in the final quarter, the annual balance sheet shows a minus for both key figures.

Machine-to-machine communication
As part of the VDMA Info Day 'Industry 4.0 Standards in Application', the VDMA Robotics Department and the OPC Foundation signed a Memorandum of Understanding to develop an OPC UA Robotics Companion Specification.

On January 1, 2017, Christoph Laeis took over the position of Managing Director at Indat Robotics in Ginsheim-Gustavsburg near Mainz. He succeeds Klaus Scholl and Willi Fröhlich, who founded the company in 1994.

The Asian economic region relies on industrial robots: in just five years, the number of operational units rose by 70% to 887,400 (2010 - 2015). In the 2015 financial year alone, sales figures climbed by 19% to 160,600 units.

Walter Zulauf, Director of Technology at the Güdel Group (pictured center), was elected as the new Chairman at the EUnited Robotics General Assembly in Brussels. He will steer the fortunes of the association for the next three years.

What were the highlights of the 27th SPS IPC Drives, which took place in Nuremberg at the end of November 2016? To what extent did Industry 4.0 become a reality in the 14 exhibition halls? The Computer&AUTOMATION trade fair film provides answers.

A robot as a shopping assistant
In January 2015, Fraunhofer IPA presented the Care-O-bot 4 service robot as a prototype. Now it can prove itself in practice for the first time: As the robot 'Paul', he has been greeting customers at the Saturn store in Ingolstadt since the end of October 2016 and guiding them to the products they want.

The EU project 'Echord++' promotes cutting-edge research in robotics. With the launch of 'Echord' in 2009 and its successor 'Echord++' in 2013, over 50 robots have since made it to market maturity. We show the best in a picture gallery.