FRIDA, which stands for Friendly Robot for Industrial Dual-arm Assembly, represents what most industrial robots aren’t: light weight, padded, adaptable to multiple assembly lines, human-safe, human-sized, human-shaped, and (supposedly) inexpensive. ABB’s strategy seems to be to make FRIDA as human as possible. It has the same basic shape and range as a small adult, the same number of degrees of freedom in its arms, and can be connected to vision cameras to give it optical awareness as well. This theme continues into aesthetics. Most ABB arm robots are big and orange to signal their danger to passing humans. FRIDA was purposefully designed to be light colored and approachable.

If a human worker can do it, why not a robot? Swiss robotics giant ABB recently unveiled a new concept robot that showcases how the company is aiming to have humanoid machines work side by side with people in manufacturing environments. FRIDA is a headless torso with two arms, each with seven degrees of freedom and a wide range of motion. Roughly the size of a small human, FRIDA can perform many of the same tasks as a two-armed person, yet its servos are gentle enough, and its sensors smart enough, to keep it from causing injury to any biological coworkers that run into it. Check out the robot’s capabilities in the demo video below, followed by some great pics. While it’s still only a concept piece, there’s little doubt that robots like FRIDA could replace many of the remaining human workers in factories. The only question is if/when these robots will be available and cheap enough to be purchased by small scale manufacturers around the world.

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