automation

Europe – October 24, 2026 -- Orange Quantum Systems has secured €1.5M in pre-seed funding from QDNL Participations and the Cottonwood Technology Fund to build a full-scale system for automated qubit testing, a step the startup says is needed before quantum computers can scale.

Manual testing limits state-of-the-art labs to roughly 5-qubit chips

Testing quantum chips currently takes days and is too slow for industrial-scale production, according to the company. Co-founder and R&D Director Adriaan Rol says state-of-the-art labs can test chips of about 5 qubits. The process involves cooling a chip in a dilution refrigerator for several days, tuning it up, measuring the quantities of interest and warming it up for a day. Testing therefore takes weeks, and only a few chips per year may be tested.

Global – October 21, 2026 -- A US freight forwarder now automates the splitting, sorting and indexing of 100,000 emails a month into its ERP, according to one of nine customer case studies published by PayCargo.

Document automation drives four of nine case studies

A Netherlands-based customs team within a global freight forwarder automated 4,000 monthly commercial invoices. A UK-based forwarder automated proof-of-delivery processing across more than 10 branches, removing manual data entry. A major US air cargo handler automated air waybill reconciliation with an AI-powered, API-driven workflow.

European forwarder automates 50,000 monthly email bookings

A major European freight forwarder applied AI-powered booking automation to 50,000 email bookings a month. Separately, a global freight forwarder automated carrier invoice processing across more than 20 countries.

GLOBAL – October 21, 2026 -- Large-format 3D printing is likely to reach mainstream adoption across industries by 2025, driven by gains in speed, cost and material diversity, according to an industry outlook.

Material limits, speed and scalability remain the main hurdles

Aerospace companies already produce lightweight components that meet stringent safety standards. Automotive manufacturers use the technology for prototyping and custom parts. Marine producers make items ranging from hull components to propulsion systems, and theme parks build immersive installations that traditional manufacturing could not deliver.

Material selection, printing speed and production scalability remain the main constraints.

Rochester Hills – October 19, 2026 -- FANUC America has opened an $18 million, 132,000-square-foot Training Academy in Auburn Hills, Michigan. It more than doubles classroom count from 13 to 28 and is billed as the largest corporate robotics and industrial automation training center in the United States.

Three-story Auburn Hills facility replaces Rochester Hills training site

The Academy sits on FANUC America's West Campus and includes 56,300 square feet of training space for technicians, engineers, educators, students and manufacturing professionals. It replaces the training facility inside the company's Rochester Hills headquarters.

Together with eight other regional facilities, the Academy gives FANUC's training network capacity for about 17,500 participants a year. The network runs more than 160 robots and over 40 CNC simulators.

Lakewood, Colo. – October 19, 2026 -- Versiti has become the 10th U.S. blood center to adopt Terumo Blood and Cell Technologies' Reveos Automated Blood Processing System, adding automated platelet recovery from whole blood donations across five states.

Reveos and Lumia software lift whole blood platelet capacity

Paired with the Lumia Software Platform, Reveos will let the Milwaukee-based nonprofit produce more platelets from whole blood. Versiti serves hospitals and patients in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared Reveos in 2023. Terumo BCT says it is the only whole blood automation device available in the U.S. that separates whole blood into red blood cells, plasma and platelets in one fully automated centrifugation cycle.

Global – October 17, 2026 -- Coalition says its Wirespeed platform cuts alert noise by 99.99% before any alert reaches a customer queue, replacing analyst-driven managed detection and response (MDR) with automated verdicts and containment in milliseconds.

Coalition acquired Wirespeed to address a bottleneck it attributes to legacy MDR: human analyst capacity. Adding headcount widens the alert queue and raises prices for customers without speeding up response, the company argues. Forrester Research recognized Coalition in its report The Managed Detection And Response Services Landscape, Q3 2026.

Las Vegas – October 16, 2026 -- PANDAG will show two configurations of its G1 autonomous mower at EQUIP EXPO 2026 in Louisville, Kentucky, from October 21–23, marking its second consecutive appearance at the U.S. professional equipment show.

The G1 has a 48-inch cutting width, covers up to 12 acres per day and operates on slopes of up to 38°. It combines LiDAR, AI Vision, RTK and 4G for autonomous navigation and mowing. Listed features include obstacle detection, automatic return-to-charge and resume, and multi-site management.

PANDAG splits G1 display between indoor and outdoor booths

The G1 M1500 SD (Side Discharge) will be on indoor display at Booth #21062 in the Kentucky Exposition Center. PANDAG positions it for fine-turf work requiring a consistent cut, including golf courses and sports turf.

Towson, Md. – October 16, 2026 -- DEWALT's DALE drilling robot has cut project timelines by more than 300 weeks across 44 data center construction phases, and TIME has named it to its Best Inventions of 2026 list in the Robotics category.

DALE, an autonomous downward drilling robot, was developed by DEWALT, a Stanley Black & Decker brand, in collaboration with mobile robotics company August Robotics. TIME editors and correspondents selected 300 winning innovations based on originality, efficacy, ambition, and impact.

DALE drills up to 10 times faster than conventional methods on live jobsites

On live data center jobsites, DALE has reached drilling speeds up to 10 times faster than conventional methods. The robot has drilled more than 385,000 holes with over 99% accuracy.

Shenzhen, China – October 16, 2026 -- ONERugged, a brand of Emdoor Information (SZ:001314), has expanded its Vehicle PC (VPC) portfolio with rugged vehicle-mount computers aimed at precision agriculture and autonomous mining, citing a market where autonomous mining vehicles are moving from pilot programs to full-scale commercial deployment.

Five models span 8-inch and 10.1-inch displays

The VPC line covers the V80J, V80T, V10J, V10T and V12R, in 8-inch and 10.1-inch form factors. Each unit uses a high-performance CPU architecture for edge processing and offers CAN bus communication for integration with native vehicle systems. Connectivity options include aviation-grade or Deutsch connectors and CAN, RJ45, RS232, RS485, USB and GPIO interfaces.

Douglas – October 15, 2026 -- Douglas Police Department has launched an automated victim notification system on Versaterm CommunityConnect that requires no additional staff and no restructuring of its records workflow.

Automated alerts replace manual follow-up by officers and advocates

The system sends crime victims case information and status changes as their cases move through investigation. Staff no longer have to track down and contact each victim individually.

Department leadership describes the system as an upgrade over a manual, ad hoc process. That process depended on individual officers or victim advocates remembering to follow up, and it was prone to delays and inconsistency as caseloads grew.