With a speed of 5 meters per second and a load of 4 kilograms, the fast and accurate SWIFTI™ industrial cobot Bridges the gap between cobots and industrial robots.
With a speed of 5 meters per second and a load of 4 kilograms, the fast and accurate SWIFTI™ industrial cobot Bridges the gap between cobots and industrial robots.
Zurich, Switzerland, February 24, 2021 - ABB has added a new industrial collaborative robot to its collaborative robot portfolio, combining the safe collaboration performance and ease of use of collaborative robots with the speed, precision and stability of industrial robots.
The SWIFTI CRB (Collaborative Robot) 1100 robot has been developed on the basis of ABB's world-leading IRB 1100 industrial robot with best-in-class speed and precision. With a load of 4 kg and a maximum working range of 580 mm, the CRB 1100 SWIFTI robot is simple and safe to operate, and can support application scenarios in various fields such as manufacturing and logistics to improve production efficiency, while helping more enterprises realize automation.
SWIFTI's maximum tool Center point (TCP) speed exceeds 5 meters per second, which is more than five times faster than comparable cobots and comparable to industrial robots.
SWIFTI is designed for intermittent human-machine collaboration, where it can move at high speeds to maximize productivity and avoid potential safety hazards when operators need to get close to a collaborative robot.
SWIFTI is suitable for jobs such as assembly and polishing, which require on-site supervision and part resetting by the operator. Typically, such tasks require extensive physical security measures (such as fencing) on site to minimize the risk of contact between humans and fast-moving robots, resulting in a corresponding increase in installation costs and footprint. In addition, because the robot must stop running when the operator enters the work area, line speed and production efficiency are also affected.
SWIFTI integrates a safety laser scanner and ABB's SafeMove collaborative safety feature to ensure that moving robots do not come into contact with humans, effectively preventing human injury. These technologies ensure that the robot can only start working after the operator has left the work area, ensuring safe human-machine collaboration without the need for physical barriers.
If SWIFTI detects an operator within the work area, the co-bot will automatically slow down or stop completely, allowing the operator to approach safely. When the operator leaves, the cobot restarts. If the robot senses that no one is present in the work area, it will return to full speed operation. In addition, SWIFTI uses interactive status display lights as an additional measure of protection, which visually show the cobot's working status once the operator enters the cobot's work area.
Zhang Xiaolu, global Product Manager for Collaborative robots at ABB, said: "SWIFTI Bridges the gap between collaborative and industrial robots by enabling faster secure collaboration with speed and distance monitoring. The expanded capabilities of a new generation of collaborative robots, such as SWIFTI, will enable more businesses to replace repetitive, monotonous and dangerous production processes with robots, thereby automating and increasing productivity while freeing up employees to do more valuable work."
Another feature of SWIFTI's collaborative design is its ease of operation and installation. Users can use SafeMove's easy-to-use shortcut setup tools, including the SafeMove configuration app on ABB's teaching device, to set up safe working areas for the robot.
When programming SWIFTI robots, users can do so through a detachable guided programming unit and ABB's new Wizard Easy programming software. Wizard uses a simple graphical module that makes it easy for non-professionals to automate the setup of application scenarios. These modules include basic functions such as "move", "pick" and "repeat", and users can easily and intuitively create various robot operation tasks. Wizard also has error handling, which allows novice programmers to handle errors such as collisions.
As a result, operators do not have to learn complex programming languages, significantly reducing the time, effort, and error types that have discouraged many companies, especially smes, from investing in robotic automation.
Each ABB Cobot comes with a startup kit that includes ABB Ability™ condition monitoring and diagnostics services, while users can call a support hotline free of charge for the first six months to get expert technical support, which is open to all industries.
SWIFTI and the new GoFa™ CRB 15000 collaborative robot will be available on February 24, 2021. Together with YuMi® and single-armed YuMi®, they form ABB's industry-leading portfolio of collaborative robots with loads ranging from 0.5 kg to 5 kg.
