This year’s Automate event in Chicago was a huge success, breaking their record with 867 exhibitors in attendance, up 13% from the previous year. One of these exhibitors was Advantech, the world’s largest Industrial PC company.
While at Advantech’s booth, we spoke to Hamilton Yeager, Vertical Key Account Manager at Advantech USA. He showed us some exciting innovations they presented at the trade show.
They demonstrated a range of solutions, including their application-focused products for robotics. Hamilton explained, “This is meant specifically for robotics, so it’s got a ton of different I/O. One of our partners e-con Systems is here, to showcase that they can utilise cameras. This one can run 4-6 8K cameras. Along with this, we are also showing the industrial monitors, tablets, and box PCs which we provide.”
He also discussed the benefits of attending the Automate show, saying:
“We’ve had a ton of people come by and ask about our AI vision cameras and vision systems. It’s fun walking around the show, there’s a lot of presence. After a few of these shows, you know everyone, so you hit the right folks. We’ve had great meetings with our ecosystem partners.”
Advantech is willing to modify its off-the-shelf technology and customise it to meet the customers’ needs. Hamilton told us that, for a lot of their suppliers and distributors, it’s all about solution-selling. As a result, Advantech is trying to change its model to become more open-minded, asking more questions and being less product-driven.
Hamilton added, “A lot of our customers don’t have the engineering expertise which makes their work very difficult and leads to a lot of questions that they don’t have the answers to. With our portfolio and knowledge base, we can talk to all our customers.”
