Patti and I had the good fortune to own and operate a design and manufacturing facility for over twenty years. We produced automation equipment for industrial applications, focusing on newspapers, commercial printers, and cheque printers.
We made packaging machines, material handling systems, palletizers, and specialty machinery. We never produced a robot, but our work in machine control peaked my interest. I was lucky to take a mechatronics course with Professor Goldenberg at the University of Toronto a few years ago. As humans, we easily move our hands to pick up an object, but you wouldn’t believe the complexity of mathematics and machine control needed to enable a machine to do such a ‘trivial’ task.