While robot orders in North American have trended downward after record sales in 2021 and 2022, there’s still plenty of optimism in the market for automation. More industries, most noticeably food services and life sciences, increasingly turn to automation to increase productivity and navigate the shortage of workers eager to tackle the dull, dirty and dangerous jobs robots are increasingly able to handle.
Few know the latest in robotics better than Jeff Burnstein, the president of the Association for Advancing Automation (A3). With 1,300 member companies, he’s in near constant contact with industry innovators and users alike on the road or at A3’s numerous tradeshows and conferences such as the largest automation show in North America, Automate.