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. Rather than custom installations, each FRIDA would be able to fit into new situations as your business required. Sort of the industrial robotics equivalent of a wild card. ABB claims that, “normally, no safeguarding or enclosing of any kind is required, which allows for very fast installation, commissioning and relocation.” According to ABB’s concept, you could pick FRIDA up, move it to a station, get it to perform a task and then move it to a different station to complete other work. A single robot with multiple applications around the factory, or a fleet of such robots at your disposal – it’s up to you. And because it can operate alongside humans without injury, factory owners can find ways of combining human and robot labor in the same workspace – dropping in machines as human replacements where possible without having to convert the entire line. This new approach is suited to the areas where traditional industrial robotics have yet to infiltrate: low-capital small scale manufacturers whose products are labor intensive and not easily automated at every stage. (There’s also possibilities in large capital endeavors that still require human labor – like memory card assembly.) If FRIDA can successfully conquer this niche it will be opening up a huge number of new businesses (or parts of businesses) to automation, which is why it’s so understandable that ABB is pursuing this avenue of research. As we’ve discussed before, it seems like Rodney Brooks is aiming for the same niche with his new company, Heartland Robotics.