The Lake Forest operation of a Japanese industrial robotics company is set to show off some of its “intelligent” robots for manufacturers at a demonstration room opening this month.
Fanuc Robotics America Inc., part of Japan’s Fanuc Ltd., has set aside about 5,000 square feet in Lake Forest to display its working robots, which are called “intelligent” because they use outside information and can change their behavior accordingly.
Most of Fanuc’s robots do tasks such as picking up items off an assembly line, packing them in boxes and loading up pallets for shipping. Others do assembly, material removal, painting, dispensing and welding.
“We need to show people how robots can be effectively used to save companies money and help them be competitive,” said Rush LaSelle, general manager in Lake Forest for Fanuc, which has its U.S. headquarters in Rochester Hills, Mich.
Some robots are set to demonstrate a technology called force feedback, where a robot can gauge how much force it needs to use to assemble an object.
Two robots at the entrance of the demo room are going to assemble a pen and hand it to visitors. The robots can “feel” how much force to use to screw on the pen’s cap.
Other intelligent robots have the ability to “see” with the help of cameras mounted over an assembly line.
“Robots are very repeatable,they like to do the same thing over and over again,” LaSelle said. “But oftentimes parts aren’t repeatable. They come down a conveyor belt in a slightly different location. Having vision allows the robot to compensate.”
In this case, a camera takes an image and sends it to the robot, which then readjusts itself so it can pick up the item.
Some “seeing” robots can do quality testing by ensuring a product is assembled correctly before loading it into a box, LaSelle said.
Fanuc has about 20 workers here and generates about $15 million in yearly sales from Lake Forest. The U.S. headquarters is expecting to do more than $500 million in revenue this year.
The company’s Japanese parent does about $4 billion in sales a year.
The Lake Forest operation does research, consulting, installation and fine-tuning of robots. It also makes some related electronics and software.
Fanuc customers include Dell Inc., Sony Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp., Safeway Inc., Boeing Co. and others.
The company says more than 200,000 of its robots are installed worldwide.
The robots cost about $20,000 on the low end and can run into multimillions for ones that do auto manufacturing.
Fanuc is seeing sales grow on demand from customers in the medical device, drug and renewable energy industries, according to LaSelle.
They’ve also helped offset losses among U.S. automakers, he said.
Digital Milestone
Cypress-based Christie Digital Systems Inc. said it’s installed more than 5,000 of its digital movie projectors in movie theaters around the world.
This is a big milestone for the company, which launched a plan to sell theaters on its digital movie projectors just three years ago.
“In 2005, there were only a handful of installations in the entire world and many people questioned the long-term viability of the move to digital,” Chief Operations Officer Jack Kline said.
Christie’s first contract was it’s biggest,a 4,000-projector installation for customers of Access Integrated Technologies Inc., a Morristown, N.J.-based technology service provider for movie theaters.
It’s second biggest was a deal for 2,300 projectors with Georgia’s Carmike Cinemas Inc.
Christie since has made other deals to roll out the projectors in Denmark, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Canada, Switzerland and China.
Christie started in Los Angeles and moved to Cypress a dozen years ago to be near to its parent, Japan’s Ushio Inc., a maker of halogen lights that has its U.S. base in Cypress. Ushio, which bought Christie in 1991, makes the lamps that go inside Christie’s projectors. For 70 years, Christie has been making film projectors used to show movies in theaters. About nine years ago, Christie bought Canada’s ElectroHome Projection Systems to get into digital projectors.
The Business Journal estimates that privately held Christie sees about $400 million a year in revenue.
Fabless Still Growing
Growth for companies that design chips and contract out their production still are on the upswing, according to a recent report.
For the second quarter, sales from what are known as “fabless” chipmakers totaled $14 billion, up 9% from a year earlier, according to data from the Global Semiconductor Alliance, a San Jose-based trade group.
The companies are known as fabless because they don’t operate their own silicon wafer fabrication plants, or fabs.
For the first half of the year, fabless sales were $27 billion, up 12% from a year earlier.
Worldwide chip revenue, including the biggest companies that run their own plants, totaled $136 billion in the first half of 2008, up 5% from a year earlier.
The top five fabless chipmakers by second-quarter sales:
– San Diego’s Qualcomm Inc. ($1.8B)
– Irvine’s Broadcom Corp. ($1.2B)
– Santa Clara’s Nvidia Corp. ($893M)
– Santa Clara’s Marvell Technology
– Group Ltd. ($843M)
– Milpitas-based SanDisk Corp. ($816M)
