Spotlight on Innovation: 2022 Engineers’ Choice Awards

Control Engineering announces the best automation, control and instrumentation products in the 19 categories of the annual Engineers' Choice Awards program.

By Amanda Pelliccione February 7, 2022

The 35th Control Engineering Engineers’ Choice Awards shines a light on 19 categories of control, instrumentation and automation products, revealing the best of those introduced in 2021 as chosen by the Control Engineering print and digital audience. Review the winners and honorable mentions here to see if these innovative hardware and software products can help resolve some of your most pressing problems.

Also, join us in congratulating these technological innovators. Let them know you learned about their solutions in Control Engineering, and tell them what problems you need to resolve next. Their continuous improvement ensures that manufacturers, machine builders and automation system integrators can achieve the levels of agility, efficiency and effectiveness necessary to compete – and win – in today’s global economy.

A total of 72 finalists from 48 companies were listed on the ballot for evaluation. Automation professionals from Control Engineering’s subscriber lists – all of whom are responsible for or influence technology purchases, or have hands-on day-to-day interaction with the technologies in each category – then voted to identify the products they felt were the most exceptional based on technological advancement, service to the industry and market impact. The result is a short list of Engineers’ Choice Awards winners and honorable mentions in 19 categories. A total of 1 grand winner, 19 winners and 22 honorable mentions were named for 2022.

Control Engineering staff extends appreciation to all who nominated products and took the time to vote. Find more product innovations in the New Products for Engineers Database.

2022 Engineers’ Choice Grand Award

The Grand Award – first introduced with the 2017 program – is bestowed upon the product that received the most overall votes in the 2022 program. This year’s Grand Award recipient is the UniStream Cloud programmable logic controller (PLC) from Unitronics.

The UniStream Cloud PLC features a built-in 5-year subscription to UniCloud, an end-to-end, no-code Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) platform designed for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and machine builders. This controller makes it easy for OEMs and machine builders to enter the world of IIoT and big data without relying on cloud/information technology (IT) professionals or paying for data storage. The UniStream Cloud PLC is part of the Unitronics UniStream series of multi-function PLCs available as PLC+HMI or stand-alone PLCs. A broad range of communication protocols are supported out-of-the-box, including EtherNet/IP, CANopen, and MODBUS TCP/IP.

2022 Engineers’ Choice Awards

Winners and Honorable Mentions by category

How to enter the competition

Get a head start on the 2023 Engineers’ Choice Awards program by listing your products in the New Products for Engineers database. Control Engineering will solicit entries from contacts in the database and invite to submit between October 3, 2022, and December 30, 2022. All product nominations, including supporting materials and payment, are conveniently submitted through an online form created by CFE Media. Submit a new or significantly modified hardware, software or combination of the two introduced and available in North America from January 2022 through December 2022 for the 2023 awards. The product details provided should be factually convincing and clearly differentiate benefits in the voting criteria: technological advancement, service to the industry and market impact. (Hint: We observe that engineers often appreciate quantified benefits more than adjectives.) Typically, 75 to 110 products are nominated, with 3 to 10 products in each category. One winner from each subcategory is selected based on subscriber votes. For the 2022 awards, 73 products from 48 companies (or major divisions) were nominated in 19 categories, resulting in one Grand Award to one company (with the highest number of votes among all categories), 19 Engineers’ Choice Awards to 12 companies (highest number of votes in that category) and 22 Honorable Mentions to 19 companies (second highest number of votes in that category).


Author Bio: Amanda is the Research Director and Project Manager of Awards Programs for CFE Media and its publications.