ABB Robots and the Home Robot as Conductor

LG's CLOiD conducted an AI Orchestra of appliances at IFA 2026. ABB's MultiMove, OmniCore and RobotStudio show how factories already coordinate robots.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/24/20261 min read

The all-electric kitchen of the late 1950s was full of machines, but each one worked alone. The oven had its own dials, the washer had its own timer, and the person in the house was the only thing connecting them, walking from one to the next.

Black and white photo of a woman at a wall oven in a 1950s kitchen

An all-electric kitchen in Seattle, around 1958. Photo: Seattle Municipal Archives / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Appliances started talking to each other decades later. Makers like LG added app control and network links so a phone could start the washer or check the fridge. The machines still couldn't move anything, though, so someone had to load the oven and unload the dryer.

Visitors looking at connected home appliances and a red robot vacuum on an LG trade show stand

LG's home appliance zone at CES 2012. Photo: LG Electronics / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

At IFA 2026 in Berlin this month, LG put its CLOiD home robot at the center of what it called an AI Orchestra. In LG's scenarios the robot takes milk from the fridge, puts a croissant in the oven, starts the laundry and later folds and stacks the dry clothes.

Silver and white wearable LG CLOi robot on a display stand at a trade show

LG's CLOi SuitBot, part of its CLOi robot family, at IFA 2018 in Berlin. Photo: Matti Blume / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Factories solved a version of this problem years ago. ABB's MultiMove lets one controller run up to four robots, either in step or independently. At Gerresheimer's glass plant in Essen, MultiMove cells place hundreds of bottles a minute onto carriers before other ABB robots pack them.

Row of orange ABB robots handling glass bottles above a conveyor

ABB robots working side by side on a glass bottle line at Gerresheimer in Essen. Photo: ABB

ABB's OmniCore controller links robots to the PLCs and screens that run the rest of a line, and RobotStudio lets engineers test the whole cell on a laptop before it is built. In an OmniCore cell, the controller is what tells the robot a machine is ready or signals the conveyor to move.

Two people at a computer beside an ABB OmniCore controller cabinet and a robot cell

ABB's OmniCore controller links robots to the rest of a production line. Photo: ABB

A home robot will need the same kind of coordination, only with a fridge and a dryer in place of conveyors. I suspect the hard part will be getting appliances from different brands to talk to it, which factories have spent decades sorting out with shared standards.

Engineer working on a laptop next to a white ABB industrial robot

Testing a robot program on a laptop with RobotStudio. Photo: ABB

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