RoboTape at Automate 2026: Exploring Next Generation Automation
By the time the doors closed at McCormick Place, one thing had become remarkably clear: manufacturers aren’t asking whether tape application can be automated anymore. They’re asking how to automate increasingly complex materials, geometries, and production environments.
If there’s one advantage to spending three full days demonstrating automation technology at an event like Automate 2026, it’s the opportunity to step outside your own perspective and listen. Every manufacturer arrives with a different process. Every engineer brings a unique production challenge. Every system integrator sees automation through a slightly different lens. Individually, those conversations are valuable. Collectively, they reveal something much larger.
This year’s show, held at Chicago’s McCormick Place, was on track to be one of the largest editions in the event’s history, with organizers projecting more than 50,000 attendees and 1,000-plus exhibitors across the show floor. Physical AI dominated keynote presentations. A new Humanoid Robot Pavilion, sponsored by NVIDIA, drew steady crowds. Vision systems became smarter. Edge computing became faster. The International Federation of Robotics used the show itself as the stage to release preliminary 2025 installation data, reporting that industrial robot installations in the United States grew 11% year-over-year to roughly 38,000 units, with automotive remaining the largest adopter at 13,500 units. Across nearly every booth, the conversation centered on making automation more intelligent, more adaptable, and easier to deploy throughout modern manufacturing.
Those trends were impossible to ignore.
Yet inside the RoboTape booth, another pattern quietly emerged. While the broader industry discussed the future of robotics, the engineers who visited us were focused on something much more immediate: solving production problems that still consume labor, introduce variation, and limit manufacturing efficiency today. Tape application was one of those problems.
The Questions Have Changed, and That’s the Real Story
Perhaps the most interesting observation wasn’t the number of visitors we welcomed over three days. It was the noticeable change in the questions they asked.
Only a few years ago, many conversations began with uncertainty. Could tape application really be automated? Would robotic placement achieve the consistency required for production? Could flexible materials be handled without stretching, wrinkling, or misalignment? Those questions have largely disappeared.
Instead, visitors arrived carrying production samples, material specifications, CAD drawings, and cycle time requirements already worked out. One engineer walked up holding a sample panel with a strip of 3M VHB already pressed onto it. Another opened a folder of production drawings before he had even introduced himself. A process engineer from a window manufacturer described, almost in passing, a 102-inch strip of VHB that still gets applied by hand to a cardboard roller, every shift, because nobody had built a machine for that length.
Discussions immediately shifted toward compatibility with specific pressure-sensitive materials, integration with existing robot platforms, application repeatability, process validation, and production throughput. Manufacturers no longer need convincing that robotic tape application is possible. They are evaluating how to implement it successfully within increasingly demanding production environments. That shift may have been the most meaningful takeaway from the entire show.
Tape Automation Is Expanding Far Beyond Automotive Manufacturing
For many years, robotic tape application was primarily associated with automotive assembly. The industry continues to drive innovation in this space, but the conversations in Chicago demonstrated just how broadly tape automation is expanding.
Throughout the event, our team discussed applications involving HVAC equipment, aerospace assemblies, industrial windows, construction materials, battery manufacturing, consumer products, RV weather sealing, electrical assemblies, medical manufacturing, and energy infrastructure. Some visitors described sealing battery modules with compressible gasketing materials. Others were evaluating thermal tapes used on turbine components, masking tapes for aerospace finishing processes, or silicone bulb seals installed inside waterproof enclosures.
Manufacturers producing industrial windows explained that operators were still manually applying more than 100 inches of VHB tape to every assembly. Construction companies discussed double-sided tape used to bond structural wall panels. Automotive suppliers explored everything from headlamp gasketing and mirror assembly to interior trim, water intrusion seals, foam placement, and instrument panel bonding.
Perhaps the most striking realization was that these applications looked completely different from one another, yet they shared the same underlying engineering challenge. Flexible materials are inherently difficult to automate. Unlike rigid components, pressure-sensitive materials stretch, compress, deform, and react differently depending on width, adhesive properties, liner construction, backing materials, and environmental conditions. Successfully automating those processes requires considerably more than feeding tape toward a robot. It requires understanding the behavior of the material itself.
Material Diversity Is Driving the Next Generation of Automation
One topic surfaced repeatedly throughout the week: materials. Visitors weren’t simply asking whether RoboTape could apply tape. They wanted to know whether it could apply their tape.
Our discussions touched on 3M VHB, Tesa industrial tapes, butyl sealing materials, acrylic foam, EPDM gasketing, silicone profiles, magnetic strips, hook-and-loop fasteners, felt, flock tape, polyurethane foam, structural adhesives, thermal tapes, masking products, and a long list of specialty pressure-sensitive materials developed for highly specific manufacturing processes.
Each material behaves differently. Foam compresses. EPDM rebounds. Wide acrylic foam creates different peel forces than narrow VHB. Hook-and-loop products require different application pressures than structural bonding tapes. Thermal products introduce entirely different handling considerations. Those differences fundamentally influence how an automation system has to manage tension, liner removal, application pressure, cutting, and robot motion.
One of the biggest lessons from Automate 2026 wasn’t simply that manufacturers are using more tape. It’s that they’re using more types of tape than ever before.
A Pattern Emerged: Manufacturers Need Wider Material Capability
As conversations accumulated throughout the show, another trend gradually became impossible to ignore. The materials themselves were getting wider.
Multiple manufacturers described applications involving large-format foam tapes, wide EPDM gasketing, industrial Velcro strips, thick compressible sealing materials, battery gaskets, and broad structural bonding products that extend well beyond traditional tape widths. The pattern repeated itself across industries. HVAC manufacturers needed larger sealing profiles. Automotive suppliers required wider foam components for noise, vibration, and water management. Construction companies discussed structural wall panels. Industrial window manufacturers needed long runs of wide VHB materials. Machine builders described foam applications exceeding traditional tape dimensions.
Interestingly, this wasn’t a trend that appeared after the show. It validated a direction our engineering team had already been pursuing. The RoboTape XL project was developed specifically to address the growing demand for wider materials while maintaining consistent tension control, liner handling, application pressure, and placement accuracy across significantly larger formats. Rather than simply scaling an existing design, wider materials required a fundamentally different approach to head geometry, material management, and process stability.
Seeing so many visitors immediately recognize where the RoboTape XL could fit within their own production environments reinforced that the need already exists. The technology is simply catching up to manufacturing demand.
Innovation Begins With Listening
One of the misconceptions surrounding industrial automation is that innovation always starts inside an engineering department. In reality, many of the most valuable improvements begin somewhere much simpler: a conversation.
Automate 2026 reinforced something we’ve believed for years. Manufacturers are remarkably good at identifying production problems. Our responsibility is transforming those challenges into practical automation solutions. That philosophy has shaped the evolution of RoboTape from its earliest installations through today’s expanding product family, and it continues to influence developments like the RoboTape XL, the Fast Feed Pro, and future technologies currently under evaluation.
None of these innovations were developed simply because they were technically possible. They were developed because manufacturers repeatedly described the same production constraints, and those constraints deserved better solutions.
Looking Beyond Chicago
Trade shows naturally generate conversations. The value comes from what happens afterward.
The projects discussed during Automate 2026 now span automotive manufacturing, HVAC systems, aerospace components, energy applications, industrial glazing, battery production, construction products, and numerous custom manufacturing environments. Many are already progressing into technical evaluations, application reviews, and material testing.
More importantly, those discussions offered a valuable snapshot of where tape automation is heading as an industry. Manufacturers are becoming more comfortable integrating robotic processes into production. Materials continue evolving. Applications are becoming more specialized. Production demands continue increasing, and automation solutions have to evolve alongside them. That broader trajectory tracks with what the IFR’s preliminary 2025 data showed for the US market as a whole: robot installations rebounding after two years of decline, with growth increasingly coming from sectors outside traditional automotive lines, exactly the kind of diversification our own conversations in Chicago reflected.
Looking back on three days in Chicago, perhaps the most encouraging realization wasn’t that interest in RoboTape continues to grow. It was seeing how far the conversation around tape automation has progressed. The question is no longer whether robotic tape application belongs in modern manufacturing. Increasingly, manufacturers are asking how quickly they can make it part of their production strategy.
If a conversation like the ones described above sounds familiar, our team is available to walk through your specific application, material, and production requirements.