Collaborative Robot Series : FRIDA from ABB

Collaborative Robot Series : FRIDA from ABB

  

  

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In industrial automation, flexibility and intuitiveness are becoming more and more the sinew of war. In fact due to the necessity to produce in efficient ways in order to be economically viable, industrial robotics has to do a mindset change: be flexible, accessible (re: moneywise) and easy to use (i.e. not spending more time to program a process than to produce a product).

This quest for flexibility and user-friendlyness has seen the arrival of a new generation of industrial robots: the collaborative robots. This articles is the first of a series of posts dedicated to the introduction of this new generation of robots. In this blog post we will introduce FRIDA from ABB.

FRIDA: An Introduction

FRIDA (which stands for Friendly Robot for Industrial Dual-Arm) is a dual-arm robot with 14 axis of freedom (7 in each arm). The size of this industrial robot is similar to a small adult. This concept has been created in response to requests from ABB'S customers who desired a robotic solution for manufacturing environments where robots and humans have to work together.

Originally built for the consumer electronics industry and other small assembly applications, this collaborative robot has been designed to be as compact as possible. In fact it takes the same working space as a human. Compact, this robot is portable and can easily be carried around the production floor, as well as mounted onto different work stations. Its controller is integrated into its torso making its installation and change of location even easier.

FRIDA: KEY FEATURES

The size and the look of this robot really clash with the usual ABB robots. Instead of being massive and orange (meaning: hey I'm big and tough, so don't come too close), FRIDA is small, compact, light weight and its colors are different shades of grey.

Here are the key features of this collaborative robot:

• Harmless robotic coworker for industrial assembly
• Human-like arms and body with integrated IRC5 controller
• Complements human labor with scalable automation
• Padded dual arms ensure safe productivity and flexibility
• Lightweight and easy to mount for fast deployment
• Agile motion based on industry-leading ABB robot technology

Considering that this robot was designed for electronics assembly, we can assume good precision and repetability.