Omron Acquires OnLogic to Advance Industrial AI

Japan’s Omron is acquiring OnLogic, an industrial computer service provider in the U.S. and its parent company Interlogic. This is because it prepares to boost its efforts to enter physical AI and next-generation factory automation. The combination of Omron’s precision control technology with OnLogic’s rugged, industrial-class computing hardware. 

OnLogic designs and builds industrial PCs for harsh working conditions. It has a wide range of products including fanless computers, rugged systems, edge servers and configurable platforms in industrial automation, machine vision and Internet of Things applications. Such systems handle data near the source and enable factories to make business decisions based on the signals received from the machines, without depending fully on the cloud. 

Taking advantage of this computing expertise, Omron is developing physical AI platforms together with the existing automation & control technologies. Physical AI is a term widely used in pursuits that brings intelligence and intelligence capabilities to equipment in the real world such as robots, production machines or automated inspection systems, while digital AI focuses predominantly on digital information.

For manufacturers, such a convergence can facilitate the implementation of real-time quality inspection, adaptive machine control, more intelligent material handling, etc. Processing sensor and camera data requires the computing power of industrial PCs and automation hardware converts decisions into machine actions. The challenge will be to embed these capabilities into reliable, robust systems which can be used on factory floors, day in and day out.

In the announcement, OnLogic will remain an independent company, with the same brand, management team, and strategies. The deal is also thought to bolster Omron’s footprint in the U.S. market. The transfer is part of a trend in industrial automation, where manufacturers are increasingly integrating capability across computing, sensing and control technologies. 

With the inclusion of the industrial computing element to its automation offerings, Omron is positioning itself to meet the demand with the rise of physical AI and more practical applications in the factory.