ABB Robots and the Job of Opening Boxes

From store clerks with box cutters to Viam's BoxBot at IROS 2026: how ABB's Robotic Item Picker, FlexPicker and YuMi fit warehouse decanting and home unboxing.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/24/20261 min read

Everything on a shop shelf arrives in a box, and for most of the last century a person opened it. Store clerks and volunteers cut the tape, folded back the flaps and lifted out cans and packets one at a time, then stacked them on the shelves by hand.

Black and white photo of women unpacking cardboard boxes of food onto wooden shelves
Black and white photo of women unpacking cardboard boxes of food onto wooden shelves

Volunteers unpacking and shelving canned and boxed food by hand in 1950. Photo: Mennonite Church USA Archives / Wikimedia Commons (no known restrictions)

The tool barely changed. It is still a utility knife with a snap-off blade. Warehouses added conveyors, scanners and racking, but decanting (opening supplier cases and moving the items into storage totes) stayed manual. The work is repetitive, and slipped knives still cause plenty of cut hands.

Pink snap-off utility knife with the blade extended
Pink snap-off utility knife with the blade extended

The snap-off utility knife, still the standard tool for opening cases. Photo: Evan-Amos / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

On September 22, Viam said it will show BoxBot at IROS 2026 in Pittsburgh. A camera guides the arm's blade along the tape, and a vision-language-action model then opens the flaps. It learned that second step from 125 human demonstrations recorded in about five hours.

Two women opening and unpacking cardboard boxes in an office
Two women opening and unpacking cardboard boxes in an office

Staff unpacking a delivery of boxes by hand. Photo: Oregon Department of Transportation / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

ABB already sells robots for the steps around the cut. The ABB Robotic Item Picker uses AI vision and suction grippers to pick mixed items it has never seen before, so it can take products out of opened cases and drop them into totes or order bins.

ABB industrial robot arm fitted with a suction cup gripper
ABB industrial robot arm fitted with a suction cup gripper

The ABB Robotic Item Picker with its suction gripper. Photo: ABB

On packing lines, IRB 360 FlexPicker delta robots fill cases at high speed. The dual-arm YuMi was designed for small, fiddly parts. I think that makes it a good test bed for flap opening and unpacking, where you need two hands and a light touch.

Row of ABB delta robots placing bags into open cardboard cases on a conveyor
Row of ABB delta robots placing bags into open cardboard cases on a conveyor

ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker robots filling cases on a packing line. Photo: ABB

If research like BoxBot holds up, the next step is a full decanting cell that cuts the tape, opens the case, picks the items and flattens the empty box for recycling. A home version is further off, but a robot that unpacks the week's groceries and parcels onto the shelves is an obvious job for household robots.

ABB YuMi dual-arm robot handling small parts on a bench beside a technician
ABB YuMi dual-arm robot handling small parts on a bench beside a technician

ABB's dual-arm YuMi working on small parts next to a person. Photo: ABB

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