Industrial Machines for the 21st Century

The 21st Century inherits much of the conveniences of industrial work from the discoveries and inventions made a century before. Computing and telecommunications technologies have seen some of its most furious pace of growth and development in the last 50 years. Miniaturization in electronics and data storage made these computers and telecoms gadgets not only small enough to be hand-held, but more powerful and affordable to the common man.

Aerospace and military sciences and engineering contributed much of the impetus to spearheading developments in these areas. And as a result, they have made inroads in the commercial industries that make life at home and work in the office a lot more productive and convenient.

Mainframes and Super Computers

Airlines and the aerospace industry have long been home to mainframe computers. These are highly robust computers that can do multiple tasks without suffering the problems found in our home and desktop PCs.

The requirements of the business often demand continuous availability of computing and networking resources. Only industrial-grade computers can fill this need. The last years of the 20th century saw the emergence of mini-computers that can work cost-effectively as departmental computers because of their specific highly focused computing resource, such as for accounting or purchasing functions.

They can be networked to enable seamless data access across the levels of the organization. But while they have achieved industrial-strength features, mainframes and super-computers have not lagged behind and they remain the staple computing resources in large industries and business complexes.

The global markets now confronting businesses have made mainframes the ideal core brain in large corporations. Super thinking computers that organize and process billions of data points are processed in parallel computers that can make up what are called super computers. The special effects in movies have moves the audience to expect nothing less than realistic visuals and sounds and the computers that process these images require so much computing power, like having a CPU for each screen pixel, that only massively parallel computers can do the job.

Robotics

This is a highly specialized computer application that is basically an output peripheral of powerful computers. Rather than having a printer as an output device, robotics employ mobile and agile armatures as output devices that can manipulate objects to achieve an end product or object. Automobile plants have these robots that can grab panel molds from forges, paint them and assemble with consistent precision humans would have difficulty achieving. And all these are controlled remotely from computers in an office.

Similarly, large warehouses with automated systems have robots installed along rails parallel to warehouse shelves and bins and controlled remotely from computers. These robots can sense the storage numbers and retrieve or pick up the needed parts or materials for distribution without the need for human intervention.

Hazardous conditions at work can easily and cost-effectively be performed by robots. Bomb squads and military units have them to handle life-threatening situations. Unmanned military spy planes are essentially robots that fly enabling remote sensing of enemy targets. The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plan accidents made clear that robots can do the job of cleaning up radioactive and chemical accidents that would have the potential to kill any person doing it.

For the 21st Century industry, we can expect more and more robotic technologies to do the job. Mainframes and super computers can be right behind them remotely controlling these robots with increasing efficiency in more complex jobs.