Automate is where the automation world comes to see what is actually delivering results on the factory floor — not just what looks good in a slide deck.
The week opened on a high note. On stage at Automate, the Zivid 3 camera family received a Gold Honor at the 2026 VSD Innovators Awards, voted by the engineering community and presented annually by Vision Systems Design. It is a recognition of work aimed squarely at the barriers that have long held 3D vision back in robotics: ambient light, long working distances, mixed SKUs, difficult objects, and slow acquisition. Seeing Zivid technology proven across so many partner demos in the same hall made the award feel earned rather than ceremonial.
Two booths showed how far software has come on top of reliable point cloud data. Siemens ran its SIMATIC Robot Pick AI in a piece-picking demo, handling objects that varied in shape, color, and transparency with the camera mounted on the robot arm. Pickit, meanwhile, launched Pickit 4.1 and its standout new capability: AI prompt-based segmentation with no hours or days of model training, pretrained and ready out of the box. Under the hood, it runs on a Zivid 2+ MR60, feeding the point cloud data that makes the picking reliable in the first place.
Several demos took on the materials that traditionally break 3D vision. Richtech robotics picked randomly stacked small metal parts from a pile and placed them in a nearby bin, with the camera mounted overhead, alongside their humanoid robot Dex. The parts were shiny and full of fine detail, exactly the conditions Zivid is built for. SICK showed a multiple bin picking application with the camera mounted directly on the robot, picking from different bins and placing to a central point to demonstrate the versatility of its PLB software.
The heavy industrial end of the floor was just as active. Scalable Robotics demonstrated a plasma cutting application with the camera mounted on the arm alongside the torch, scanning large objects from multiple angles so the software could provide the path and the robot could approach with the accuracy a torch demands. Titan Robotics ran a surface finishing demo on a large industrial robot. Titan Robotics was in multiple booths showcasing their SPARC Adaptive Autonomy Sanding & Grinding System, with Zivid both on-arm and statically mounted.
Warehouse-style workflows rounded out the picture. CMES showed a logistics demo where a robot picked varied items arranged randomly in a bin, scanned each with 2D scanners, and placed it in a container, a piece-picking job straight out of the warehouse of the future. Neura Robotics ran a palletizing cell where a conveyor fed boxes of different colors past a Zivid camera, which imaged each one before the robot placed it accurately on the pallet.
VMT brought three distinct Zivid applications to its booth. CloudBK builds a complete 3D point cloud of a part to enable flexible, cycle-time-neutral robot path corrections through virtual cross sections. BeadMap RTI is a ready-to-integrate system that inspects adhesive, sealant, and thermal paste beads inline right after application, delivering real-time quality data on width, height, position, and continuity. PickFinder 3D detects parts in sorted or chaotic scenes, calculates optimal collision-free gripping points and robot paths, and supports fast, stable bin picking across varied components.
What stood out most was the breadth. The Zivid 2+ R-series was strongly represented across the floor, powering everything from delicate piece picking to large part welding. That range is the real story of Automate 2026: one vision platform, proven live, across nearly every application an integrator might tackle.
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