With the development of artificial intelligence technology, industrial robots are accelerating their evolution towards autonomy, intelligence, and collaboration. As a global pioneer in the field of industrial robots, ABB has identified trends, boldly innovated, and deployed in depth in multiple dimensions.

The story of ABB Robotics began in 1974, and 50 years later in 2024, ABB’s robotics portfolio is stronger than ever. On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, ABB has sent a strong signal: artificial intelligence is being deeply integrated into robots, and ABB will promote this process with greater courage and courage, establish new technical barriers, and further strengthen the brand.

Marc Segura, President of ABB Robotics, said:

“In the coming year, there will be increasing focus on the critical role of artificial intelligence, from mobile robots and collaborative robots to enabling new robotic applications in new fields and creating new learning and development opportunities for people. Frontier is redefining the future of industrial robotics.”

Artificial Intelligence will drive new levels of autonomy in robotic applications

Accelerating developments in artificial intelligence are redefining what is possible with industrial robots.

Currently, artificial intelligence is enhancing robots’ grasping, picking and placing abilities, as well as their ability to map and navigate in dynamic environments. From mobile robots to collaborative robots and more, artificial intelligence is giving robots unprecedented speed, accuracy and payload-carrying capabilities, allowing them to take on more tasks in environments such as flexible factories, warehouses, logistics centers and laboratories.

Segura said AI-enabled mobile robots could transform industries such as discrete manufacturing, logistics and laboratories.

For example, robots equipped with ABB's new Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (Visual SLAM) technology have advanced mapping and navigation skills, granting new autonomy while significantly reducing the infrastructure required to guide previous generations of robots. This paves the way for the shift from linear production lines to dynamic networks, creating significant efficiencies and taking on more dreary, dirty and dangerous tasks, freeing workers to perform more valuable work.

Artificial intelligence will see robots enter new frontiers

The potential offered by AI-powered robotics is impacting industries far beyond manufacturing.

By 2024, these technologies are expected to deliver substantial efficiency gains in more dynamic environments such as healthcare and life sciences, as well as retail. Another example is the construction industry, where AI-driven robotics can make a significant contribution to improving productivity, enhancing safety and sustainable building practices while stimulating growth.

Segura said the construction industry is a good example where AI-powered robots will prove to be transformative, providing real benefits by solving many of the issues facing the industry today, including worker shortages, safety concerns and stagnant productivity. value.

Capabilities such as enhanced recognition and decision-making provided by artificial intelligence, coupled with advances in collaborative robots, enable workers to be deployed safely. These advances also allow robots to perform critical tasks such as bricklaying, modular assembly and 3D printing with greater precision and speed, while reducing the need to transport materials over long distances through on-site assembly through lower emissions such as on-site concrete mixing. Contribute to more sustainable buildings.

Artificial intelligence will provide new opportunities for collaboration between education and robots

Advances in artificial intelligence and robotics have important implications for training and education, closing the automation skills gap and making robots more accessible to more people and businesses.

As artificial intelligence makes programming easier by guiding and even natural language, education can shift more toward how robots can help humans more effectively rather than just teaching programming skills. This shift will make robots more approachable and bring them to a wider audience, opening up new employment prospects while helping to alleviate labor and skills shortages.

Segura said a lack of people with the skills needed to program and support robots has long been a barrier to the adoption of robotic automation, especially among small and medium-sized manufacturing companies.

As advances in generative AI lower barriers to automation and expand the focus of education beyond programming, we will see this problem increasingly overcome. Programming languages will be further revolutionized thanks to the support of artificial intelligence, and workers can verbally guide robots to complete their tasks, which will create a new dynamic in human-machine interaction.

write at the end

In the long evolution of industrial robots, the biggest pain point has always been the lack of autonomy: robots need to manually plan their movement routes, and the overall system architecture has natural flaws. This not only increases the complexity of deployment and maintenance, but also restricts robots from playing a greater role in emerging fields such as flexible manufacturing and warehousing and logistics.

With the improvement of this kind of autonomy, the role of mobile robots is also expanding from automatic transportation to more complex "mobile workstations", which provides the possibility to establish flexible work units and is conducive to liberating humans from boring and repetitive work. come out.

And for a long time, the main applications of robots have been concentrated in manufacturing, especially large-scale standardized assembly lines such as automobiles. However, with the support of artificial intelligence, industrial robots are rapidly penetrating into more complex and dynamic scenarios such as medical care, construction, and laboratories, and their application scope has exploded.

At the same time, for the vast majority of small and medium-sized enterprises, the threshold for deploying and using industrial robots is still high, which seriously restricts the wider application and promotion of related technologies. In addition to cost factors, another major obstacle is that operation and maintenance are too specialized and require a lot of manpower for coding and debugging. But with the advancement of AI technology, these pain points are gradually being resolved.

Facing the new wave of technology, most companies have chosen to seize the initiative in development. This is true for established giants like ABB, and there are also a number of new stars rising. It is undeniable that the development of AI is an opportunity and a challenge for enterprises. Whether it will stay on top of the trend or be photographed on the beach remains to be seen.