History

2022: Establishment of a joint venture with HASCO

The company, ABB an expert in automation, and, HASCO Chinese a supplier automobile of spare parts, announced on January 13, 2022 the creation of a joint venture to develop the latest generation of smart manufacturing in automotive. industries China

The joint venture will be based on the existing relationship between the two companies. Such cooperation will lead to the decisive development of a very flexible and sustainable production of auto parts in the framework of HASCO's activities in China.

As the transition of the automotive industry to electric vehicles is gaining momentum, spare parts manufacturers must increasingly invest in flexible manufacturing that can respond to rapidly changing demands and trends. The partnership between ABB's Robotics division and HASCO, which includes ABB's 40 percent stake in the joint venture, will increase the use of smart technologies and artificial intelligence in the industry. Both sides agreed not to disclose any additional details about the investment.

Due to the fact that the automotive industry has been undergoing a transformation since its inception, and sales of electric vehicles should surpass cars with an internal combustion engine in many parts of the world by 2035, there is an obvious need to support the transition of the industry, "said Sami Atiya, president of the Robotics and Discrete Automation business of ABB. - This joint venture will allow us to further strengthen HASCO's position with automated solutions that will benefit customers in China, which, as one of the major automotive markets, will play a key role in ensuring sustainable transport development in the future.

The joint venture, which is expected to begin operations in the second quarter of 2022, will rely on the knowledge and production experience of both partners to realize the huge potential for increasing efficiency in the automotive parts industry. Customers in various industries, from car bodies to chassis systems, power battery room electronic engineers and electronic drive systems, will benefit from new, highly efficient and environmentally friendly production methods.

In 2022, ABB will open a robotics plant in Shanghai, where a research and development center will be located, accelerating the introduction of innovations in product development, artificial intelligence and collaboration with customers on automation solutions.

2021: Opening a testing center for 3D vision solutions in the field of object processing

ABB Robotics Sweden On September 2, 2021, the company announced that its division "" opened a testing center in Jönköping () to develop automated solutions for lifting and moving objects using Random Bin Picking three-dimensional technology. sight The Center is a stage in the implementation of ABB's comprehensive strategy to accelerate flexible automation in small medium-sized enterprises. At the ABB Global Centre, a testing centre specializing robotic in machine tools solutions, the ABB team of experts, together with customers and partners from around the world, will create developments that will be part of their to be integrated own solutions.

"The launch of the Random Bin Picking Test Center is an important milestone in our efforts to create process automation capabilities in industries that have historically been difficult to automate. Accurate, fast and efficient processing of objects placed in random order will significantly increase the flexibility of the procurement process. Compared to traditional systems, our automated sorting solution provides efficient item handling, which means a significant payback for our customers, often in less than 12 months, " noted Andrea Cassoni, managing director of robotics for general industries, ABB.

ABB Test Center to Accelerate Development Innovation Random Bin Picking, which combines the ABB robot and 3D vision and allows the robot to process objects in non-standard positions and configurations. The technology recognizes objects in any position, so they can be placed in a container or on a tray in an arbitrary order, thereby making it unnecessary to pre-sort parts or place them in a strictly specified order.

For the traditional systems to work correctly in sorting objects, they must be located in a certain position before the robot can pick them up and process them. Manual placement of parts can take a long time, repeated lifting and feeding of blanks can cause injuries, and positioning of parts in the wrong position can cause delays in production.

Complete automation of the part extraction process will increase efficiency, productivity and flexibility of production processes, accelerate the processing of materials and the fulfillment of production tasks, including machine maintenance and the supply of blanks. It also provides opportunities for further automation of other manufacturing processes, including interaction with autonomous mobile robots, which can automatically deliver trays with parts to a robotic cell. The area of ABB's smallest machine room is only 3 m2, so it can be installed on existing production lines.

At ABB's Random Bin Picking Technology Development Test Center, customers and partners will be able to test various configurations and scenarios before implementing them directly in production. This will minimize risks, optimize the time and costs traditionally associated with creating automated object processing solutions, and reduce downtime during installation. The center team will use RobotStudio, a modeling and programming tool from ABB. This program allows you to model processes before physical cells are created for final testing and refinement.

ABB's automated Random Bin Picking solution - the result of a tight a collaboration between ABB's Global Centre for Robotic Machine Services Solutions and a network of partner companies specializing in the development and delivery of 3D machine vision technologies.

2019

ABB robots in North Korea

At the end of November 2019, images from North Korea showed industrial robots created by the Swiss company ABB, which should not be there. The supply of industrial equipment to North Korea is prohibited in accordance with UN sanctions because of the nuclear weapons program supported by the DPRK government. ABB said it did not violate international sanctions against North Korea, but its equipment was probably resold without the manufacturer's permission.

==

==