ABB YuMi Redefines Precision Assembly With Collaborative Dual-Arm Innovation

Collaboration Without Barriers

ABB's YuMi represents a watershed moment in industrial automation, introducing the world's first truly collaborative dual-arm robot designed to work safely alongside human operators without protective fencing or cages. Since its debut in 2015, YuMi has fundamentally reshaped how manufacturers approach flexible assembly operations, particularly in consumer electronics and small parts production. The robot's ability to pause within milliseconds upon detecting unexpected contact, combined with its inherently safe design featuring padded arms and zero pinch points, eliminates the traditional separation between human workers and industrial machinery.

Engineering Human-Friendly Design

What sets YuMi apart is its deliberate mimicry of human ergonomics and movement patterns. The dual-arm system features seven degrees of freedom per arm, enabling dexterous grasping capabilities that rival human hand precision. Built from a lightweight yet rigid magnesium skeleton wrapped in soft protective padding, YuMi achieves what competitors struggle with: combining industrial-grade performance with genuine collaborative safety. Its integrated vision system, housed directly in the robot's grippers, enables real-time part recognition and adaptive task execution without external camera infrastructure, streamlining deployment in existing production environments.

Precision Meets Practical Intelligence

The engineering breakthrough lies in YuMi's distributed sensor architecture. Force-sensing joint actuators throughout both arms provide tactile feedback, allowing the robot to modulate grip pressure dynamically and detect unintended contact instantly. A six-axis inertial measurement unit combined with absolute encoders ensures repeatability of 0.02 millimeters, enabling assembly tasks requiring surgical-level accuracy. The integrated OmniCore controller runs ABB's RobotWare software and RAPID programming language, enabling intuitive lead-through programming that requires no specialized robotics training, democratizing automation access for small and medium enterprises.

From Electronics to Watchmaking

YuMi's versatility extends across surprisingly diverse industries. Electronics manufacturers deploy it for circuit board assembly and component placement where precision and cycle-time efficiency matter equally. Pharmaceutical operations leverage its gentle handling for vial sorting and kitting applications. Watchmakers and precision instrument manufacturers benefit from its 0.02-millimeter repeatability and ability to execute intricate multi-step sequences. Educational institutions increasingly adopt YuMi for robotics research and workforce development, recognizing that hands-on experience with collaborative systems better prepares students for modern manufacturing environments than traditional industrial robot training.

Key Specifications & Performance

YuMi's compact footprint measures 399 by 496 by 496 millimeters with a total weight of 38 kilograms, enabling mounting on standard workbenches or integration into existing production cells without structural modifications. Each arm delivers a maximum TCP velocity of 1.5 meters per second while maintaining a 559-millimeter reach and 500-gram payload capacity per arm. The integrated Cognex vision system in the grippers, combined with force-sensing actuators and absolute encoders, creates a perception-rich platform capable of handling unsorted parts and adapting to production variations. These specifications directly enable real-world outcomes: faster changeover between product variants, reduced error rates in assembly sequences, and safer human-robot interaction without sacrificing throughput.

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