Factory owners and manufacturers could soon see human workers working alongside FRIDA concept robots in assembly lines.
FRIDA has been introduced by ABB Robotics and is a half-humanoid robot, which has been created for industrial life. Even though FRIDA could be used to replace several human workers at a time, it has been created to work along with human counterparts. They exhibit a human-like body and have padded arms that could show a wide range of motion. They also have cameras for recognizing and identifying parts and a flexible gripper for taking care of small components.
Its humanoid structure makes it very easy to be blended among human workers or even be interchanged with them. In the place of a head it has a convenient handle, which makes it very portable and compact, and at the same time eliminates the uncanny valley problem, where their life like features but lifeless hands and limbs make them appear very scary. The research has been completed on FRIDA and prototypes are at present being tested and evaluated in pilot applications. FRIDA may be the one who is connecting and assembling the parts of the next new tablet or smartphone. Being a harmless robotic co-worker for industrial assembly, it complements human labor and its agile motion is based on ABB’s robot technology. It is not only lightweight and compact but is also very easy to set up. Its human like arms and body is fitted with an integrated IRC5 controller and its padded dual arms guarantee flexibility and safe productivity.
Source: http://www.abb.com/cawp/