One arm picks up a green plastic lids. The second retrieves a white plastic piece that the fitter Electrical Glimberg first fitted with a rubber ring. With both “hands” puts Yumi cover in place and reaches for the next one.
– This is groundbreaking, said ABB Swedish CEO Johan Söderström is in place when Yumi for the first time shown to the Swedish media at ABB in Västerås.
Co – or collaborative – bots are a hot trend. ABB claims to be at the forefront with the launch of Yumi which took place at the Hannover Fair in April this year after almost ten years of development.
– The interest was huge and we sold the first already during the fair, said Dennis Helfridson, head of ABB Robotics in Sweden.
The differs Yumi from ABB’s other robots is that it is easy – the entire robot weighs 38 kilograms – and can work side by side with people without the security fence that the classical ABB robots require.
Armarna are padded and it should not be possible to squeeze when the robot twists and turns of the arms. If something gets in the way discovers the robot it and stops immediately.
I try. When Yumi’ll get yet another piece of plastic I put the hand in the way. There will be a light touch – so stop it.
Demo Station should display the robot’s skills. Primarily Yumi supposed assembly work in the electronic industry. Where there is rapid automation, ABB wants to latch on to. But Yumi can be used in all types of light assembly. The gripper arms can lift up to half a kilo of high precision.
– It opens for automation in new areas where we previously had no to offer, says marketing director Stefan Drakensjö.
Just like most other cooperating robots on the market so Yumi easy to program. To get the robot to go to a certain point you just have to grab the arm, pulling it over there and mark the point on a touch screen. I’ll try and in minutes I have learned Yumi to pick up my pen and draw a line in the notepad.
Yumi manufactured in ABB’s Chinese robotic factory, and the first copies will be rolled out “shortly”. The price is somewhere between 300 000 and 400 000 depending on options. Yumi is available with built-in cameras, grippers and conveyor belts with an illuminated surface where the robot can “see” the components which it should pick up.
Discussions with customers in several different applications. But none of ABB managers want to reveal any sales figures or forecasts of how many they hope to sell before the year is out.
Hopes in this new area are high and in the long term, it may be more robots in Yumi family.
This spring, bought ABB addition, the German company Gomec who developed a collaborative robotic arm, which was launched in three sizes last summer. Gomtec is now being integrated into ABB but there is no information on when ABB version will be launched.
When it comes ABB is a direct competitor to the Danish upstart Universal Robots which expects to sell 4,000 of its simple robotic arms for years. Universal Robots was bought in the days of the American company Teradyn.
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