Automation World Joins the EDGE Awards Program

March 10, 2025
The EDGE Awards seek to highlight the influential and cutting-edge technological advancements shaping the engineering space, creating more robust, efficient and productive designs and solutions.

The EDGE Awards are supported by the engineering-centric brands at Endeavor Business Media, including Electronic Design, Machine  Design, Microwaves & RF  and Power & Motion. New in 2025, three additional  brands will be supporting the Edge Awards, including Control  Design, Control and Automation World, amplifying the full scope of  engineering coverage across all major disciplines and application spaces. 

All products recognized by the EDGE Awards will have been launched between May 27,  2024 and May 5, 2025, to ensure we are looking at the latest developments.

With the addition of the three new engineering brands supporting and promoting the Edge  Awards, we have introduced new categories to align with this expanded scope of coverage:

  • Additive Manufacturing and Rapid Prototyping: 3D printing machines, materials,  and software, as well as interfaces to CAD and machine tools for post-processing
  • AI Data Analytics: Machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL) hardware and  software that incorporates or is designed to improve product quality, supply chain  management, and production throughput.
  • Cabling and Enclosures: Hardware meant to hold controls and electronics as well  as monitor the temperature, pressure, humidity, etc. inside the enclosure, such as  terminal blocks and cabinet coolers.
  • Communications & Networks: Wireless and wired systems, modules, and  software that facilitate communication between chips, modules, and systems,  including I/O modules, cloud communications.
  • Computing Hardware, Software and Systems: Edge computing devices and  interfaces, as well as the compute, storage, and communication modules and  systems used to analyze data and assist design engineers. 
  • Design Tools & Software: EDA, CAD, CAM, CAE, Digital Twin, modeling and  simulation software as well as application tools and operating systems to assist the  design engineer. This category also includes IDEs, compilers and middleware.
  • Electronic Components: Passive electronic components like capacitors,  transistors or diodes, connectors, cables, antennas, and switches.
  • Industrial Controllers: PLCs, PACs, IPCs.
  • Machine Vision & Inspection: Cameras, sensors, lenses, filters, lighting, frame  grabbers, software, and systems  .
  • Motion Control Components: Pneumatic, hydraulic, and electric motion control  components and systems including actuators, cylinders, ball screws, motors and  drives, and accessories such as fasteners, bearings, gears, belts, and chains, as  well as fluids, filters, and compressed air systems.
  • Operations Software: MES, Maintenance, Connected worker/workflow, ERP.
  • Optical Components and Systems: This includes adaptive optics, optical  materials (such as metamaterials), optical coatings, precision optics, micro-optics,  lenses, mirrors, aspheres, prisms, and freeform optics. This category also includes  lighting products for machine vision applications.
  • Production Tools and Systems: This includes creation of chips, printed circuit  boards, components and systems as well as all mechanical and machine tool  operations, welding, soldering, and adhesives focused on metal or component  joining as well as materials used to fasten and secure components.
  • Robotics: Single-axis and multi-axis robots for assembly, product inspection and  supply chain use as well as cobots, AGVs, and other robotic transport vehicles. This  also includes software related to robotics including fleet management and robot  operating systems. 
  • Test, Measurement, Sensors and Software: Test and measurement equipment  and sensors that measure things including electrical, photons, speed, temperature,  vibration, positioning, dimensional accuracy, defect detection and other operational  parameters, as well as the software needed to effectively analyze the sensor data.
  • Visualization: HMI, SCADA, dashboards.

Why should you participate in the 2025 EDGE Awards?

Participants of the EDGE Award program receive coverage on our brand sites, exposure in  our newsletters, and recognition on our social platforms. Winners and honorees of each  category receive additional promotion upon the award program’s conclusion and  announcement in mid-September. The submission that gets the most overall votes across all categories will receive the Leading Edge Award, our top designation.

All submissions are reviewed and voted on by the engineering audience of Electronic  Design, Machine Design, Power & Motion, Microwaves & RF, Control Design, Control and  Automation World. Any votes submitted by non-industry members are excluded from the  final results.

How can you participate in the 2025 EDGE Awards? 

If you have a product/component/system/solution/service that has launched between May  27, 2024, and May 5, 2025, you may nominate the product for consideration in any of the  categories specified above. 

Each entry is $595 if submitted by the Early Bird deadline of April 7, 2025, or $695 if  submitted by May 5, 2025. There is no limit to the number of submissions an individual or  company can enter.

Start your entry now.

Review the EDGE Award program details and categories.

Sponsored Recommendations

Food Production: How SEW-EURODRIVE Drives Excellence

Optimize food production with SEW-EURODRIVE’s hygienic, energy-efficient automation and drive solutions for precision, reliability, and sustainability.

Rock Quarry Implements Ignition to Improve Visibility, Safety & Decision-Making

George Reed, with the help of Factory Technologies, was looking to further automate the processes at its quarries and make Ignition an organization-wide standard.

Water Infrastructure Company Replaces Point-To-Point VPN With MQTT

Goodnight Midstream chose Ignition because it could fulfill several requirements: data mining and business intelligence work on the system backend; powerful Linux-based edge deployments...

The Purdue Model And Ignition

In the automation world, the Purdue Model (also known as the Purdue reference model, Purdue network model, ISA 95, or the Automation Pyramid) is a well-known architectural framework...