Embroidery Robot: From Suzhou Silk to ABB YuMi

Fine silk embroidery is one of the slowest hand crafts there is, which makes an embroidery robot an odd idea. Even so, in late September a Chinese company released a film of a robot hand splitting silk thread and stitching under the eye of a Suzhou embroidery master. This post traces how embroidery moved from hand work in Suzhou to Swiss Schiffli machines and computer controlled multi-head machines, what the new dexterous hands can do so far, where ABB robots such as the dual arm YuMi could fit, and what still stands in the way at home and in factories.

A woman stitches a pine and pavilion scene in Gu embroidery, a style that began with the Gu family in Suzhou. Photo: Gary Soup / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

How hand embroidery became a machine job

Suzhou embroidery, or Su Xiu, is one of China's best known needlework traditions. Embroiderers split a silk thread into finer strands and lay thousands of tiny stitches to copy the shading of a painting. Its most famous practitioner is Shen Shou (1874 to 1921), whose lifelike embroidery imitated paintings. Her piece The Italian Queen, made in 1909, won first place at the Nanjing South Seas Exhibition, and her Portrait of Christ won a gold medal at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. She taught as well, and in 1911 she founded a school for women's crafts in Tianjin.

A flower and bird embroidery by Shen Shou, the best known Suzhou embroiderer of her time. Photo: Shen Shou via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

In Europe, machines took over much of the work in the 19th century. Early hand embroidery machines, guided by an operator, used double-ended needles that passed right through the fabric, each carrying a single thread. In 1863 Isaak Gröbli built the first Schiffli machine at Benninger in Uzwil, Switzerland, with a small boat-shaped shuttle that made a lockstitch. Practical machines appeared in 1868, and eastern Switzerland around St. Gallen became the centre of the trade. In 1910 the country had 4,862 Schiffli machines and 15,671 hand machines at work. Later Schiffli machines were 10 to 15 metres wide and carried more than 600 needles.

An early 20th century Saurer Schiffli embroidery machine, fully automated with a card reader. Photo: Chris Riedener / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Control passed from people to stored data in stages. Around 1912, Saurer fitted punch card readers to its Schiffli machines, so a card held the position of every stitch and the hand-guided pantograph was no longer needed. Japan's Tajima started making multi-head automatic embroidery machines in 1964 and added automatic colour change with six needles in 1973. In 1980 the first computerised embroidery machines reached the home market, and digitising software soon followed. Home machines from makers such as Toyota and Brother brought hooped, computer controlled stitching into sewing rooms.

A Toyota 510 SP computerised embroidery machine from 1986, made for home sewing rooms. Photo: Xofc / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Robot hands meet silk thread

Even fast machines need people around them. In a typical embroidery shop, staff hoop each shirt or cap, load the frames, change thread cones, trim jump stitches and take finished pieces off rows of heads. Fine art embroidery, like the Suzhou screens sold to collectors, is still made entirely by hand, because a needle on a gantry cannot decide how to split and blend silk. The latest robot hand demonstrations try to copy exactly that kind of judgement.

A multi-head industrial embroidery machine stitching sports jerseys in Pakistan. Photo: USAID Pakistan / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

On September 30, 2026, AGILINK, a spin-off of the Chinese robot maker AgiBot, released a film of its OmniHand 3 Ultra learning Suzhou embroidery from the embroidery inheritor Fu Xianghong. The hand separated silk strands with one finger while the others held tension, twisted thread, threaded a needle, stretched fabric across a frame and stitched. The company says its fingertips sense force in three directions and that it has shipped more than 15,000 dexterous hands. New Atlas, reporting on October 6, called the demo a stunt, but added that it shows a real bottleneck in robotics, which is fine force control.

The Shadow Dexterous Hand, a research robot hand, holding a light bulb. Photo: Richard Greenhill and Hugo Elias, Shadow Robot Company / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

ABB does not make embroidery robots, and we know of no ABB embroidery project, so this part is a possibility. The dual arm YuMi IRB 14000 was designed for small parts work beside people, with padded arms and a low payload, which would suit loading hoops, swapping bobbins or placing patches. A GoFa CRB 15000 could take finished caps off a multi-head machine and stack them. Further down the line, ABB already sells a Robotic Fashion Inductor that picks bagged clothes onto a sorter. Programs like these are usually built and tested first in RobotStudio.

ABB's dual arm YuMi IRB 14000 working beside a lab technician. Photo: ABB

Where embroidery robots are heading

At home, a simple embroidery robot already exists: the computerised machine that stitches a digitised design inside a hoop. The next home improvement is more likely to come from software, for example turning a photo into a stitch file automatically. A dexterous hand like AGILINK's might one day help a hobbyist with threading or hand finishing. For now it is a lab and showroom machine, and the company has not given a price for home use.

A computerised embroidery machine at the Temporaerhaus in Neu-Ulm stitching a Wikipedia globe. Photo: Kritzolina / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

In factories, the unsolved job is the handling around the stitching heads. Hooping soft fabric so it lies flat without stretching is hard for grippers, and each garment size needs its own frame. Robots will probably start with stiffer items such as caps, patches and labels, then move on to garments as vision and soft grippers improve. Our post on garment sewing automation covers the same problem in sewing, where limp fabric keeps many jobs in human hands.

ABB's Robotic Fashion Inductor places bagged clothes onto a sorter. Photo: ABB

Price will set the pace. Dexterous hands with tactile fingertips are new and expensive, and a shop owner has to compare one with the wages of a machine operator. Safety is less of a worry, because embroidery loads are light and cobots like YuMi and GoFa are built to slow down or stop on contact. Skills are a bigger gap. Teaching a robot by demonstration, as AGILINK did with Fu Xianghong, needs people who understand both the craft and the robot software, and a workshop needs someone to keep the robot running between lessons.

Students working with ABB YuMi robots in an Italian school lab. Photo: ABB

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