Control Intelligence

In this episode of Control Intelligence, managing editor Anna Townshend shares machine builder and system integrator news highlights from the month of May.

This week’s guest on Control Intelligence is Patrick Bunn, owner of Bunn Automation Consulting in Birmingham, Alabama. Bunn’s career has included valuable experience with CMC Steel Alabama, Revere Control Systems, EC&S, Hargrove Controls & Automation and Enercon, as well as his volunteer work with younger people in technology, engineering and automation. He will be one of the presenters at OT SCADA CON this July in Houston, where he'll be discussing industrial network protocols and how to use Wireshark software for troubleshooting, as well as the OSI model, which he wrote a very popular on for Control Design. He will speak at the event on July 24 at 3 p.m.

This week’s guest on Control Intelligence is Stu Shepherd, co-founder and president of Shepherd Solutions. Shepherd was selected as the winner of the 2025 Joseph F. Engelberger Robotics Award for Leadership. He will be recognized at the awards dinner during the Automate Show in Detroit the week of May 12. Shepherd is nearing 50 years of transforming manufacturing in the Americas through robotic automation and capital equipment-related new business development. His past service includes being chairperson of the Robotic Industries Association (RIA) and the Association for Advancing Automation (A3). In addition to having chaired both A3 and RIA, Shepherd continues as an A3 Robotics board member. He is also a safety committee member and a member of the American Welding Society (AWS), serving on the D16 Robotic and Automatic Welding Committee. Prior to founding his consulting firm, Shepherd's past professional experience includes automation integration roles at General Motors, a well as sales and leadership roles at FANUC America, KUKA, Güdel and Universal Robots. He’s also held consulting roles at Gain and HowToRobot, which merged in April 2024.

The decentralized MX-System achieves completely cabinet-free automation of machines and systems. Beckhoff has bundled more than four decades of automation expertise into the MX-System, which performs all of the tasks and gives individual externally mounted components the protection of a classic control cabinet. In this episode of Control Intelligence, editor in chief Mike Bacidore talks with Brandon Snell, MX-System Product Manager at Beckhoff Automation about all thinks cabinet-free automation.

This week’s guest on Control Intelligence is robot royalty. Joe Gemma was the 2024 winner of the Joseph F. Engelberger Robotics Award for Leadership, but that was just a touchstone along a career that continues to move robotics and automation forward. Gemma serves on the board of directors for the Association for Advancing Automation, A3, which hosts the annual Automate Show, this year taking place in Detroit the week of May 12. He’s also past president and board member of the International Federation of Robotics. He’s been the CEO of KUKA Robotics Americas and CEO of Staubli North America, and this month he was named CEO of Wauseon Machine, which specializes in automation, endforming equipment and precision machining, where he’s been since 2022.

Message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT) is a protocol. It has a broker and a client and can run over Ethernet. In this episode of Control Intelligence, written by contributing editor Tobey Strauch, editor in chief Mike Bacidore discusses MQTT and how it is used in different industries.

Manufacturing is wrought with safety devices. As we progress further along with cobots and mixing humans and automation together, presence sensing becomes more important, not only for operations, but for functional safety. In this episode of Control Intelligence, written by contributing editor Tobey Strauch, editor in chief Mike Bacidore discusses machine safety, specifically presence-sensing technologies.

Spring is sprung, and it’s time to start making plans for upcoming conferences and trade shows. In this episode of Control Intelligence, editor in chief Mike Bacidore shares two of his favorite upcoming automation events—Automate and the CSIA Conference—and what attendees can expect.

In this episode of Control Intelligence, managing editor Anna Townshend shares machine builder and system integrator news highlights from the month of March.

In this episode of Control Intelligence, written by contributing editor Charles Palmer, editor in chief Mike Bacidore explains the different types of industrial sensing technologies and why they're critical to ensure safety.