As part of his summer tour, Hendrik Wüst, Chief Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, visited Beckhoff on 30 August 2023 to learn about the industrial application options for artificial intelligence and the significance of automation for current sociopolitical challenges.
Automation's central role as a fundamental cross-cutting technology for the manufacturing industry was emphasized by Hans Beckhoff, Managing Director: “Automation plays a vital role in this era of transformation, as production processes need to be optimized so that less material and energy are consumed while productivity is simultaneously increased.”
Automation: Engineers must save the world with high-tech solutions
Current sociopolitical challenges clearly show how important automation technology is for virtually everyone. Both climate change and our political dependence on fossil fuels are prompting the drive to find alternative concepts for energy generation, storage, distribution, and much more besides. What’s more, creative technology has to be used to develop new solutions for dealing with limited raw material availability. “As we say at Beckhoff, ‘Engineers must save the world!’ Our mission is to develop products and automate production processes so that they consume less raw materials and less energy than they did previously and make all manufacturing processes more efficient,” explains Hans Beckhoff.
High-tech solutions are a crucial factor in the emergence of new and sometimes revolutionary automation in two respects. Beckhoff PC control technology integrates IT and automation into a powerful platform, thus combining the best of both worlds in a high-performance control system right on the machine. This formula for success has become popular with users worldwide and constitutes an excellent foundation for new future technology, allied with the implementation of artificial intelligence. Beckhoff drives these developments with over 500 development engineers and manufactures the resulting automation technology products, such as industrial PCs, drive amplifiers and motors, I/O systems, cameras, and much more in Germany, with 90% of production being completed locally in Ostwestfalen-Lippe.
Beckhoff Automation with AI
The concept of AI is already firmly anchored in many areas of Beckhoff automation technology. In fact, TwinCAT Speech was introduced as early as 2018 as a speech input and output tool powered by deep learning technology. Just a year later, an integrated machine learning solution seamlessly became part of the TwinCAT automation software, providing machine builders with the optimal foundations for enhancing machine performance. Beckhoff also uses this solution in-house to handle tasks such as highly complex path calculations in the XPlanar motor drive system for floating product transport within machines and systems. The latest example of industrial AI implementation can be found in TwinCAT Chat, which was presented at Hannover Messe 2023. This tool allows large language models such as ChatGPT to be used for more efficient control programming.
