ABB Robots and Home Tidying: Picking Up the Clutter

Robot vacuums still dodge the mess. After IFA 2026, how ABB's Item Picker, YuMi and GoFa point to home robots that pick up clutter and fix their own mistakes.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/24/20261 min read

Picking things up off the floor has always been the part of housework nobody automated. In 1950 the vacuum cleaner was already common, but someone still had to walk around first, gathering shoes, toys and laundry so the machine had a clear path.

Black and white photo of a woman using a canister vacuum cleaner while a small boy watches
Black and white photo of a woman using a canister vacuum cleaner while a small boy watches

Housework in a Finnish home in 1950, with the vacuum cleaner out. Photo: Erkki Voutilainen / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

The first Roomba, sold from 2002, did not change that. It bumped around the room and pushed past whatever it could not swallow, and owners learned to tidy up before they pressed the button. Twenty years of better robot vacuums added mapping and obstacle cameras, but they still steered around the mess.

Grey and black round Roomba robot vacuum seen from above
Grey and black round Roomba robot vacuum seen from above

The original iRobot Roomba from 2002. Photo: Larry D. Moore / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

At IFA 2026 in Berlin this month, the IFA NEXT hall was packed with humanoids, many from Chinese companies, and appliance makers showed home robots with arms and hands, including a robotic hand from vacuum maker Mova. A South Korean exhibitor told Korea's Electronic Times that the real gap between vendors was whether a robot could notice a failed task and recover from it.

Round red and black Miele robot vacuum on a trade show stand
Round red and black Miele robot vacuum on a trade show stand

A robot vacuum on display at IFA in Berlin. Photo: Matti Blume / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB has been working on that problem in factories and warehouses for years. The ABB Robotic Item Picker uses AI vision to choose a grasp on objects it has never seen, and the single-arm YuMi can be taught small pick-and-place jobs through the Wizard app on its FlexPendant.

Single-arm ABB YuMi robot picking small boxes with a FlexPendant tablet in the foreground
Single-arm ABB YuMi robot picking small boxes with a FlexPendant tablet in the foreground

A single-arm ABB YuMi taught a pick-and-place job with the Wizard app on its FlexPendant. Photo: ABB

GoFa cobots have torque sensors in all six joints, so they feel when they bump into something or someone and stop. A household tidying arm needs the same reflex, because a living room is full of people and things that were not there the day before.

Woman working beside a white and grey ABB GoFa robot arm at a table
Woman working beside a white and grey ABB GoFa robot arm at a table

An ABB GoFa cobot working next to a person. Photo: ABB

Watching a robot miss a sock, notice, and try again is less impressive on a show floor than a humanoid running through a pre-programmed routine, but it is the harder problem. My guess is that the tidying robots people end up buying will be the ones that handle their own mistakes, probably with the kind of vision and force sensing ABB already ships.

Three ABB GoFa collaborative robot arms of different sizes on a grey background
Three ABB GoFa collaborative robot arms of different sizes on a grey background

ABB's GoFa cobot family, with torque sensing in every joint. Photo: ABB

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