ABB has unveiled the world’s first robot that can safely work with people. Dubbed YuMi – the name stands for ‘you and me working together’ – the two-armed robot has force-sensing technology that makes it incapable of hurting people. This safeguard frees it from the cages in which industrial robots must currently work, allowing it to work side-by-side with people on assembly lines. In this video you can see YuMi working with a person to assemble electronic components for an ABB machine. Using video sensors it identifies the location of each separate component, picks them up and fits them together before dropping the new unit in front of the worker to add the final piece. ABB’s head of robotics Per Vegard Nerseth told tce that the robot is likely to find its first job outside of ABB putting together devices such as mobile phones, and has also gained interest from Swiss watchmakers. Assembling the delicate mechanical parts of a wristwatch shouldn’t be a problem for YuMi, which is so precise “It can thread a needle,” Nerseth explained. Pekka Tiitinen, head of discrete automation and motion at ABB said YuMi heralds a new future for human-machine collaboration, sharing tasks “in ways we could never have imagined”. YuMi was unveiled in London yesterday, and will be commercially launched in April next year at Germany’s Hannover Messe – the world’s largest industrial technology fair.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 12:16:54 +0000
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