Automate 2024 achieved unprecedented success last month with record-breaking attendance and exhibitor participation. According to a show press release, 42,895 registrants from around the globe convened at Chicago’s McCormick Place from May 6-9 to explore the latest advancements in robotics, artificial intelligence and automation technologies.
Hosted by the Association for Advancing Automation (A3), the show marked a historic milestone with 867 exhibitors—up 13% from the previous year—spanning more than 320,000 square feet of exhibit space.
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“The tremendous attendance and engagement at Automate 2024 will help stimulate increased adoption of robotics and automation technologies,” said Jeff Burnstein, president of A3. “Driven by labor shortages, companies throughout the world now seek automation solutions to remain competitive and grow their businesses. Automate has emerged as the one show that offers valuable solutions and real-world expertise designed for users in every industry and application area.”
Burnstein is not alone in his positive reaction to the show. “This show has been an enormous success,” said Eric Halvorson of DigiKey. “The turnout has just been phenomenal. Chicago has just been a fantastic place for this show…we’re seeing a lot of customer engagement. We are very excited about what’s going on here.”
Phoenix Contact’s Ted Thayer, who had started to lose his voice by Day 3, had this to say: “It’s been a really good show for us so far…I’ve talked to a lot of great customers about our open automation platform plus about all the different tie-ins we have…it’s been wonderful.”
“We just broke our record for number of visits,” said Edward Neff, CEO of SMAC Corp., a maker of programmable electric actuators based on moving coil linear servo motors. He also recognized that times are changing: “Everybody wants to switch [to electric]…pneumatics are World War II tech…they’re hanging in there, but you can buy the pneumatic stuff on Amazon now.
“If you get your price low enough, then you get lots of people coming by,” he added. “And it took us a while to do it, but we did it.”
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In the Tormach booth, CEO Dan Rogge said they had the only machine at the show that was cutting parts, “So a lot of people [are] paying attention to that. I think we found one of our niches here.”
“The show’s been really well attended,” Mujin Corp.’s Josh Cloer told Machine Design. “There’s a lot of robotics integrator companies that are coming by and looking at how they could use the Mujin controller to advance the capabilities of their systems or shorten the time it takes to deploy a system commission system. And there’s a lot of good end users out here looking for bin picking and palletizing,” he said.
Echoing all of the above, Brian Dengel from KHK USA, said, “Traffic has been great. Lots of new opportunities. Great to see old customers. Great to meet new customers. Terrific.”
