The top 5 pieces of content from the past week includes Product of the Year, PLCs, VFDs and more.

Control Engineering’s top 5 pieces of content over the past week includes Product of the Year, PLCs, VFDs and more.
1. 2024 Control Engineering Product of the Year winners announced
The best automation, control, and instrumentation products, selected by Control Engineering subscribers.
2. Back to the future of the PLC
Programmable logic controllers (PLCs) are not going away any time soon, and improving technologies combined with user demands will continue their evolution as a foundational automation platform.
3. Power quality, harmonics: How to select a variable frequency drive (VFD)
Part 2: Understand the advantages of 36-pulse input drive topology in medium-voltage (MV) motor applications and how medium-voltage VFD design mitigates harmonics and improves power quality.
4. PID spotlight, part 4: How to balance PID control for a self-limiting process
Control of a self-limiting process with a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller begins with learning the role of controller gain, integral and derivative in controlling the self-limiting process. Controller gain responds to the present, integral corrects based on the past, and derivative can be used to best-guess the future.
5. Robotic palm mimics human touch, dexterity
MIT CSAIL researchers enhance robotic precision with sophisticated tactile sensors in the palm and agile fingers, which could improve human-robot interaction and prosthetic technology.