ABB Robots in Hospital Labs: Pipettes to Mobile YuMi

How hospital labs went from hand pipetting to automated analyzers, where ABB GoFa and YuMi cobots fit on the bench today, and what mobile lab robots add next.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/17/20262 min read

A hospital lab handles thousands of small tubes a day. For most of the last century, people touched every one of them. Technicians uncapped samples, pipetted reagents, loaded centrifuges and read slides under a microscope, and the results were only as good as their hands and eyes.

Hospital laboratory technician looking through a microscope in 1943

A hospital lab technician at the microscope, 1943. Photo: Francis Stewart / U.S. National Archives (public domain)

Machines began taking over pieces of that work in the late 1950s, when the Technicon AutoAnalyzer ran chemistry tests on a continuous stream of samples. Modern analyzers do much more, yet a technician often still carries the rack from one instrument to the next.

Roche cobas clinical chemistry analyzer in a hospital laboratory

A clinical chemistry analyzer in a hospital lab. Photo: Lazborn / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Labs are under pressure to close those gaps. Market reports published this month name the same causes: specimen volumes keep rising and labs cannot hire enough staff. ABB's approach is to put a cobot on the bench. At SLAS 2026, GoFa arms ran pipetting, weighing, titration and sample prep next to Agilent and Mettler Toledo instruments.

ABB GoFa collaborative robot arm working at a laboratory bench

ABB GoFa cobot at a lab bench in ABB's healthcare research hub. Photo: ABB

GoFa lifts 5 kg and reaches 950 mm, enough to cover a standard lab bench. Staff teach it a task by guiding the arm by hand, without writing code. Torque sensors in its joints stop it when it touches something, which is why it can work beside people without a safety fence.

Robot arm gripper moving a microplate in a screening laboratory

A robot arm moves an assay plate in a high-throughput screening lab. Photo: NIAID (public domain)

For fiddly jobs, ABB's dual-arm YuMi (IRB 14000) can hold a tube in one hand and twist the cap with the other. At its healthcare research hub in Houston, ABB showed a YuMi loading a centrifuge while lab staff worked a few steps away.

ABB mobile YuMi dual-arm robot concept loading a laboratory centrifuge

ABB's mobile YuMi concept loading a centrifuge next to a lab worker. Photo: ABB

Mobility comes next. ABB's concept mounts YuMi on an autonomous base that finds its own route between rooms, and hospitals already buy mobile robots to carry supplies and samples. If the two meet, a night shift could keep test results moving with only a few people in the lab.

ABB mobile YuMi laboratory robot concept standing in a hospital lab corridor

ABB's mobile YuMi laboratory robot concept in a hospital corridor. Photo: ABB

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