Camera Module Assembly: J-SH04 to ABB Robots

The camera in a phone is a small sealed block: a lens, a focus motor, an image sensor and a flex cable, often several of them side by side. Camera module assembly puts those parts together with the lens lined up on the sensor far more precisely than a steady hand could manage, for phones, laptops and now cars and robotaxis. This post follows camera module assembly from the first camera phones of 1999 and 2000 to today's active alignment machines, and looks at where ABB robots such as the new IRB 1700 and the YuMi family fit on these precision lines.

The rear camera module of a Redmi Note 8 phone, with its lenses and flex cables. Photo: Raimond Spekking / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How a phone learned to take pictures

The first commercial camera phone was the Kyocera Visual Phone VP-210, released in Japan in May 1999. It had a 110,000 pixel camera on the front, meant for video calls, and could store up to 20 JPEG pictures. Two years earlier, on 11 June 1997, Philippe Kahn had rigged a laptop, a digital camera and a cell phone together in a maternity ward to send pictures of his newborn daughter to more than 2,000 people. Kyocera put the camera inside the phone.

The Kyocera VP-210 of 1999, the first commercial camera phone, on show at CP+ 2011. Photo: Morio / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The breakthrough came in November 2000 with the Sharp J-SH04, sold by the carrier J-Phone and usually called the first mass market camera phone. It used a CCD sensor and could send pictures over the mobile network. Demand grew fast. By 2003 camera phones outsold standalone digital cameras worldwide, led by Japan and Korea, and in 2004 Sprint brought more than a million Sanyo camera phones to North America. By 2010 there were more than a billion camera phones in use.

The Sharp J-SH04 of 2000, the first mass market camera phone, at CP+ 2011. Photo: Morio / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Volume on that scale changed how the cameras were built. Makers moved from CCD to CMOS sensors, which use much less power, and settled on the compact camera module: a sensor on a small board or flex, a plastic holder and a lens barrel, often with a voice coil motor for autofocus. Early modules focused the lens with a threaded barrel that was turned and fixed. A thread only moves the lens along one axis, so it cannot correct any tilt between lens and sensor, and tilt blurs one side of the picture.

The camera module taken out of a Samsung SGH-X660 phone, a lens unit on a flex cable. Photo: Raimond Spekking / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Active alignment, gluing and testing on today's lines

Today's modules are put together by active alignment. The image sensor is powered up and watches a test target while the machine moves the lens in up to six axes, measuring sharpness from the live image until the focus is right across the frame. Adhesive applied beforehand is then cured with UV light to lock the lens in place, and some processes add a heat cure afterwards. Because glue shrinks slightly as it cures, machines move the lens a little the other way first to compensate.

A phone camera module taken apart: holder, lens with focus coil, and image sensor on its flex. Photo: Raimond Spekking / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Makers are still adding capacity. LG Innotek, a big supplier of phone camera modules, marked ten years at its plant in Haiphong, Vietnam, in October 2026, saying it had passed 25 billion dollars in cumulative revenue there. The plant began in 2016 as a 550 million dollar camera module project. In August LG Innotek also started supplying waterproof camera modules to Zoox for its robotaxis, which carry more than twice as many cameras as a conventional car. Testing for the phone itself is a separate step, covered in our post on the smartphone testing robot.

ABB YuMi assembling small parts beside a lab worker. Photo: ABB

On 13 October 2026 ABB launched the IRB 1700 and IRB 1700ID at the CIIF fair in Shanghai. The five variants carry 6 to 12 kg, repeat a path to 0.03 mm and move their joints at up to 700 degrees per second. ABB says they cut cycle times by up to 20 percent compared with similar robots, take half the floor space of the IRB 1600 and run up to 20,000 hours between oil changes. ABB names electronics among the target markets. Loading trays into alignment machines or carrying finished modules to test would suit it, though ABB has not named a camera module customer.

A single arm YuMi IRB 14050 in its cell on GE Healthcare's prototype line in Helsinki. Photo: ABB

Where camera module assembly goes next

Phones keep adding cameras. Apple's iPhone 7 Plus made dual cameras with a 2x telephoto common in 2016, Huawei's P20 Pro brought a triple camera in 2018 and the Nokia 9 PureView carried five lenses in 2019. Each extra module needs its own alignment, and a phone with three or four cameras multiplies the work. Vehicle cameras add another demand: LG Innotek describes its Zoox modules as waterproof and built for long exposure to harsh weather, which puts more weight on adhesives, sealing and testing.

The Leica triple camera on the back of a Huawei P20 Pro, the first phone with three rear cameras. Photo: Mk2010 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB's small robots already do this class of work elsewhere. The dual arm YuMi IRB 14000 and the single arm YuMi IRB 14050 assemble small parts beside people, and the IRB 1300 comes in a clean room version for dust sensitive work. In a camera plant they could feed lenses and holders, dispense glue or carry modules between alignment and test stations. That is a possibility based on what these robots do in other electronics plants; such cells are usually planned and checked first in RobotStudio.

An ABB IRB 1300 Clean Room robot handling trays in an enclosed cell. Photo: ABB

The open problems are cost, cleanliness and skills. Active alignment machines are expensive, and a robot only pays off if it keeps them busy and avoids scrap. Dust on a sensor ruins a module, so every robot near the line must suit clean room conditions. Engineers need to understand optics as well as robot programming. ABB pairs the IRB 1700 with programming and AI software, including RobotStudio, AI Robot Trainer, OmniCore EyeMotion and automatic collision free path planning, so less of that work has to be done by hand.

An engineer programs a single arm ABB YuMi at a work table. Photo: ABB

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