Hearken to this text

The PAL TIAGo AMR integrates with the ABB Yumi collaborative robotic arm. | Picture credit score: PAL Robotics

When ABB opened its healthcare analysis hub on the Texas Medical Middle (TMC) campus in Houston, it showcased quite a few idea applied sciences, together with a cellular YuMi robotic that assists with laboratory and logistics duties in hospitals. ABB is taking this cellular manipulation idea a step additional by collaborating with PAL Robotics at a brand new lab close to Barcelona, Spain.

PAL Robotics’ TIAGo Base is an autonomous cellular robotic designed to be deployed for indoor mobility functions the place infrastructure-free navigation is required. With the addition of an ABB YuMi robotic, this collaborative cellular robotic is designed to ship samples of blood in a medical setting, instead of different robotic platforms that aren’t sufficiently small to satisfy this function.

The 2-armed Yumi cobot is designed to work alongside people. | Picture credit score: ABB Robotics

The medical lab utility is named “mobot for healthcare in hospital laboratories.” It’s being developed in collaboration with PAL Robotics to introduce mobility in medical middle laboratories. The cellular manipulator performs pipetting and tube dealing with duties, with the ability to transfer and transport the weather due to the cellular platform that provides YuMi the capability for autonomous navigation and impediment avoidance.

ABB launched Yumi in 2015. The Yumi product line has developed since that point and now consists of each a single- and double-armed cobot.

The TIAGo Base robotic may be configured for any functions in healthcare, trade or workplace environments. TIAGo Base is ready to deal with a payload of as much as 100 kg for delivering objects and strikes at speeds of as much as 1.5 m/s.

“We regularly obtain buyer inquiries on whether or not our cobots may be positioned on cellular bases to hold out functions that require the collaborative robotic to serve a number of areas or transfer across the working surroundings, equivalent to transporting parts,” mentioned Andie Zhang, world product supervisor of collaborative robots at ABB Robotics. “Due to this fact the concept was born to do a feasibility examine to place one in every of our cobots on a cellular base and see how it will look and what utility demos we are able to create with it.”

Andie continued, “as for the consumer expertise of the TIAGo Base, the features we skilled have been simple to make use of, for instance it was very simple to drive the robotic round utilizing the joystick and use the laser scanner to scan its surroundings to create a map. The net-based consumer interface is simple to hook up with and straightforward to function with. We have been additionally impressed with the payload of this comparatively small TIAGo Base cellular robotic, it was in a position to carry round 100 kg of payload together with the body and our robotic manipulator and controller.”