Technology matters most when it solves a real problem.
Across medical, semiconductors, robotics, automation, and automotive markets, engineers and innovators face complex challenges that demand precision, reliability, and performance. From enabling life-saving surgical systems to supporting next-generation AI infrastructure, motion and sensing technologies quietly power critical advancements behind the scenes.
The true measure of impact is not the component itself. It is what the end user achieves because it performs exactly as required.
Medical and Surgical
Enabling precision in robotic surgery and minimally invasive procedures where accuracy, reliability, and system size directly affect patient outcomes and access to care.
“Robotic surgery customers count on our optical encoders to track the position of their robot’s joints with uncompromising precision, in extremely tight spaces. This precision ensures that a surgeon’s motions are accurately translated into the minute robotic movements required for optimal patient outcomes. The small size of these encoders reduces the overall size of the surgical system, driving down cost for our customers and allowing them to bring their systems to more hospitals and patients every year.”
– Damien Laird, Senior Product Manager
Semiconductor and Metrology
Delivering nanometer-level motion control for lithography, wafer handling, and inspection to support increasingly smaller feature sizes and next-generation electronics.
“Semiconductor customers rely on the nanometer precision delivered by our optical encoders. Whether steering beams of light for lithography, handling wafers, or inspecting completed wafers for defects, the industry requires the unmatched accuracy of optical encoders to continue pushing the envelope of possibility with increasingly miniscule feature sizes.”
– Damien Laird, Senior Product Manager
Lab Automation
Supporting high-throughput screening, liquid handling, and compact laboratory instruments that demand repeatability, speed, and space efficiency.
“Novanta integrated steppers solve the end user’s biggest challenge: doing more in less space, with absolute confidence in every cycle. By combining motor, drive, and control into a single intelligent unit, they eliminate complexity and unlock plug-and-play performance that accelerates instrument development.”
– Facundo Lay, Principal Product Manager
UAV and SATCOM
Enabling long-range, reliable data links for UAVs and satellite communications through precise pointing, tracking, and stabilization in demanding environments.
“Customers in the UAV and SATCOM sectors are developing a wide range of subsystems, such as pan-tilt mechanisms, stabilized gimbals, and UAV payload components, to enable long-range, reliable data links. These systems transmit video, communications, and sensor data across vast distances, contributing to a safer, more connected, and better-informed world.
Their key objectives include improving reliability and robustness, reducing payload size and weight, and ensuring uninterrupted communication beyond visual line of sight. By integrating robust precision inductive encoders, our customers are designing more compact, rugged, and highly accurate pointing subsystems that perform consistently in demanding environments.”
– Ben Hallewell, Associate Product Manager
Humanoids
Powering precise, smooth, and safe human-like motion in humanoid robots while reducing system complexity and development risk.
“Humanoid robots are stepping into environments built for people, not machines. Every improvement in motor efficiency, smoothness, and control fidelity expands what humanoids can safely do. Our technology is what unlocks human-scale capability.”
– Facundo Lay, Principal Product Manager
“Our integrated motion technologies enable humanoid robot builders to achieve precise, smooth, and safe human-like movement, while reducing system complexity, development risk, and time to scalable, reliable deployment.”
– Toni Planells, Product Manager, Servo Drives
Warehouse Automation
Driving speed, throughput, and uptime in autonomous mobile robots and high-speed sortation systems for modern fulfillment operations.
“Motors are central to every pick, place, lift, and shuttle operation. The challenge they address is straightforward yet demanding: increase speed and efficiency, while ensuring zero unplanned downtime. Innovation in this area directly boosts throughput and reduces operational costs.”
– Facundo Lay, Principal Product Manager
“Our safe miniature drives enable warehouse automation solution providers to build compact, high-performance, and inherently safe machines that maximize throughput, uptime, and space efficiency in dense, fast-moving logistics environments.”
– Toni Planells, Product Manager, Servo Drives
Field Robotics
Enabling autonomous systems to operate reliably in dull, dirty, and dangerous environments such as subsea platforms, unmanned ground vehicles, and pipe inspection systems.
“Customers in the Field Robotics domain are engineering platforms and subsystems tailored for application-specific tasks in dull, dirty, and dangerous environments. These mobile solutions span a range of terrains such as unmanned ground vehicles, subsea platforms, and pipe-inspection robots; technologies that reduce human exposure to hazardous conditions and improve operational efficiency.
By incorporating IncOder technology into their designs, Field Robotics OEMs are enhancing environmental resilience, increasing system reliability, and enabling more compact and efficient system architectures.”
– Ben Hallewell, Associate Product Manager
Automotive
Enhancing precision, adaptability, and quality in automotive assembly and electric vehicle manufacturing through advanced force and torque sensing.
“Force/torque sensors have become the quiet catalysts of precision in modern automotive manufacturing. By giving robots a sense of touch, they allow factories to assemble components with human-level finesse at industrial scale. This capability ensures tighter tolerances, fewer defects, and a production line that can adapt to variance in real time to ensure consistent quality.
Integrating force/torque sensing into automotive assembly cells fundamentally enhances process control by enabling robots to detect micro-scale variations in load and alignment. This feedback allows for adaptive path correction, precision assembly, and compliant insertion tasks that were previously prone to issues due to variability. The result is a measurable reduction in downtime, and a more robust manufacturing ecosystem capable of maintaining quality at high throughput.”
– Joel Weitz, Associate Product Manager – Force/Torque Sensors
Across industries, one theme remains constant. Precision enables progress.
When surgeons operate with greater accuracy, when semiconductor manufacturers achieve nanometer-level control, when robots move safely alongside people, and when factories produce vehicles with consistent quality, technology becomes a multiplier of human capability.
By delivering high-performance motion and sensing solutions, we help innovators solve the problems that shape our world. That is where technology meets impact.
