ABB’s FRIDA offers glimpse of future factory robots
April 20, 2011 | Source: IEEE Spectrum
This headless, two-armed robot may be tomorrow’s factory worker.
Its name is FRIDA (Friendly Robot for Industrial Dual-arm Assembly), and it’s a creation of ABB, the Swiss power and automation giant, which introduced it early this month at the Hannover trade show, Europe’s largest industrial fair.
Designed for assembly applications, FRIDA is capable of using its human-like arms to grasp and manipulate electronic components and other small parts. The machine is a concept robot that ABB created to show off its vision for a new kind of industrial robot.
One scenario ABB envisions is using it to bring more automation to the fast-paced, and mostly human-powered, assembly lines found in the electronics industry.