GM Is Using the Cloud to Connect Its Factory Robots

For years, robots at General Motors’ Lake Orion manufacturing plant, located 30 miles north of Detroit, have hustled on the factory floor. They lift the frames of vehicles (like the Buick Verano and soon the Chevrolet Bolt EV) with Herculean strength, melt together metals with powerful welding guns, and apply paint in ways that would make a graffiti artist proud.

 

It’s an impressive display of coordination, what with 800 robots on the floor. But a bot that suddenly breaks down could cause disaster down the line, halting production and wasting money as workers scramble to troubleshoot the issue…

 

Working with Japanese robotics manufacturer Fanuc, networking giant Cisco, and hardware maker Rockwell Automation, GM has installed in its Lake Orion plant a sort of “mother brain” to which all its robots can connect—and it’s all built on cloud computing…

Read more from the source @ fortune.com/2016/01/30/gm-cloud-factory-robots-fanuc/