ABB has acquired a company that enhances industrial robot mobility by enabling them to navigate across warehouses and factories using 3D vision and artificial intelligence.
ABB’s newest robotics investment, the purchase of the Swiss start-up Sevensense, is in response to the growing market demand for industrial robots with autonomous movement and functionality.
The Zurich-based company Sevensense creates sensor and artificial intelligence systems that essentially give factory robots, which deliver parts to manufacturing lines, eyes and minds so they can navigate around factories.
“In the past, robots which supplied production lines usually followed fixed magnetic strips, They took a long time to install and weren’t very flexible,” ABB’s head of robotics and discrete automation, Sami Atiya, told Reuters.
“Now we have robots which can go all over the factory, but with eyes and a brain.”
With six cameras on board, each robot is capable of moving two tons of material at a pace of 1.5 meters per second.
According to ABB forecasts, the market for autonomous mobile robots is predicted to increase by around 20% annually until 2026, when it is expected to have grown from $5.5 billion in 2023 to $9.5 billion.
