Hokuyo USA will exhibit at Automate 2026 in Chicago this June, joining a field of industrial sensing vendors using the event to debut integrated LiDAR, safety scanner, and edge analytics solutions aimed at improving throughput and worker protection on the factory floor.
Background
Automate 2026 is scheduled for June 22-25 at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois, and is described by organizer A3 as North America's largest robotics and automation event. The show draws more than 50,000 registrants and over 1,000 exhibitors spanning robotics, machine vision, motion control, and industrial AI. The event arrives as sensing technology undergoes a pronounced architectural shift: rather than routing raw data to centralized servers, manufacturers increasingly deploy AI inference directly on or near the sensor itself. This edge analytics model reduces latency and network dependency-two constraints that limit responsiveness in safety-critical applications such as collaborative robot (cobot) cells and autonomous mobile robot (AMR) corridors.
Market data reflects that shift. The global LiDAR technology market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 22% from 2023 to 2030, driven by expanding automation deployments across automotive, logistics, and heavy manufacturing, according to Intel Market Research. Separately, demand for intelligent navigation technologies-including LiDAR and simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM)-surged 30% between 2022 and 2024 as AMR deployments accelerated, per Market Growth Reports. More than 200,000 AGV and AMR units were deployed globally in 2024, representing a 25% increase compared to 2022.
Details
Hokuyo USA will exhibit at booth #17027 at Automate 2026, where the company plans to demonstrate its latest 2D and 3D LiDAR solutions alongside safety laser scanners targeting AMR and cobot integration, according to an announcement published April 15, 2026. Featured hardware includes the UCT-10LCM 3D LiDAR, an ultra-slim sensor measuring only 20 mm thick, capable of detection up to 10 meters with a 100° horizontal by 6° vertical scan field. The sensor targets forklift pallet-hole detection, AGV step detection, and safety zone intrusion monitoring.
Hokuyo's UAM-series safety laser scanners cover a 5-meter protection zone and a 270° scanning field of view, conforming to IEC 61508 SIL2 and ISO 13849-1 PLd Category 3 safety standards. An EtherCAT variant enables network-level coordination across multi-robot cells-a requirement that grows more pressing as facilities operate mixed fleets from multiple vendors. Safety standards compliance remains an active industry concern: a 2025 report by STIQ Ltd. found that safety standards for AGVs and AMRs often lag behind the technology, placing greater operational responsibility on manufacturers.
At the broader market level, LiDAR vendors are converging on a paired hardware-software model. Innoviz Technologies announced in January 2026 that its InnovizSMARTer LiDAR platform, integrated with an NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano processor, reduces data transmission requirements by one to two orders of magnitude, enabling wireless deployment in bandwidth-constrained environments. The architecture eliminates the need for fiber infrastructure-a meaningful cost factor in brownfield fabrication and assembly plants. Machine Design reported that sensor fusion combining vision, LiDAR, IMU, and radar data is becoming the baseline design standard in new autonomous system architectures, replacing the single-sensor approaches that characterized earlier AMR generations.
Outlook
The global autonomous mobile robot market is projected to grow from $2.75 billion in 2026 to $7.07 billion by 2032 at a CAGR of 14.4%, according to MarketsandMarkets, with North America identified as the fastest-growing regional market. As fleet sizes scale and human-machine collaboration intensifies across automotive and aerospace production environments, demand for sensors that enforce configurable, standards-compliant safety zones without interrupting cycle time will continue to rise. Automate 2026 is expected to serve as a primary benchmarking venue for procurement engineers and systems integrators evaluating next-generation sensing platforms ahead of capital deployment decisions later in 2026.
