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When trying to educate potential users about factory automation, sometimes there’s nothing better than a demonstration. “When they see the technology, it makes sense,” said Ron Bergamin, key technology manager for machine tool automation at KUKA. “You can talk to them about it, but they have to see it.” Bergamin spoke to me during KUKA’s Automation Tech Day on February 26, 2025, at KUKA’s US headquarters in Shelby Township, Michigan. The event featured demonstrations of a number of the company’s automation technologies including robotic arms, delta robots, SCARA robots and AMRs in applications from welding to assembly and more.

Demo Day

The centerpiece of the event was an automation cell that debuted at IMTS 2024. A bin-picking robot grabbed parts that simulate raw material and placed them onto a tray. When the tray was full, an AMR moved the tray to a machine tool, where another robot loaded it into the machine for op. 10, flipped it around for op. 20, and dropped the “finished” part into another bin. When the bin with the raw material was empty, an AMR moved it to the machine tool to catch “finished” parts and moved the bin with “finished” parts to the first robot to begin the cycle again.

This demonstration highlighted three technologies:

1. Vision systems. KUKA partnered with Roboception on the demo’s bin-picking vision system. As vision systems become cheaper, more robust and more reliable, they’re becoming more common for small- and medium-sized manufacturers. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” notes Ed Volcic, chief technology officer for KUKA North America. “When you're lacking resources, technologies start to really push forward and advance.” In other words, automation technologies are advancing because manufacturers are having difficulties finding employees, and they need the employees they do have for higher-value work than bin picking. AI is also making vision systems easier to train. KUKA trained the demo’s system using a CAD model of the part.
2. Robotic arms. The demonstration also featured two industrial robotic arms, which KUKA notably chose over collaborative robots. These use KUKA.PLC mxAutomation, a PLC interface that enables users to program almost any KUKA robot from their machine tool’s controller. “The HMI is on the CNC side so the customers don't have to learn anything new,” Volcic explains. “They already know how to program their CNC.” This gives users the ease of programming experience of a cobot with the robustness and higher speeds and payloads of an industrial robot.
3. AMRs. KUKA also highlighted its AMR portfolio in the demo with two KMP 1500 AMRs, each of which featured one of two methods of operation. The AMR that moved the tray of staged parts from the bin-picking robot to the machine tool had a conveyor system mounted on top that can link up with other conveyor systems, moving items from the other conveyor to the AMR using its own battery power before transporting it to another conveyor. The other AMR “tunneled” underneath the bin of parts and used a lift system to move it from the bin-picking station to the machine tool and back.

This demonstration not only highlighted three automation technologies, but how they can be combined to create a cell that operates unattended. “The demo simulates a lights-out machine shop on a smaller scale,” Bergamin explained.