Robotic Kitting: ABB Robots That Pick the Parts

Robotic kitting means a robot collects the parts for one product, or one step of an assembly, and puts them together in a tray, bag or box before they reach the worker or machine that needs them. It sounds simple, but the parts arrive jumbled in bins and change from job to job, which is why vision matters so much. This post follows kitting from parts bins beside Ford's first moving line to Toyota's kit carts, then looks at this autumn's news, ABB's Robotic Item Picker and Flexley Mover robots, and what still makes the job hard.

The suction gripper of ABB's Robotic Item Picker lifts an item out of a bin, guided by the camera beside it. Photo: ABB

How kitting started with parts bins, runners and carts

On early assembly lines the parts lived beside the line. When Ford set up its moving assembly line at Highland Park, Michigan, in 1913, workers stood along a conveyor with bins of bolts, coils and other small parts at their feet or on the bench in front of them, and took what they needed as each piece passed. The system worked when every car was the same, but it filled the floor with stock, and a worker who grabbed the wrong part or too few of them could hold up the whole line.

Workers on the flywheel magneto line at Ford's Highland Park plant in 1913, with bins of small parts under the line. Photo: unknown author via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Toyota changed the flow. Under Taiichi Ohno, who built the Toyota Production System, the company began delivering parts in set quantities in the 1950s, and its own history lists a parts supply trolley conveyor in 1955. Parts runners, later called water spiders, walked fixed loops to top up the line. In 2002 Toyota tested its Set Parts System (SPS) at the Tsutsumi plant and rolled it out there in 2003. With SPS, the parts for one car are picked into a kit away from the line and travel with the car, so the line worker no longer searches through bins.

Taiichi Ohno, the Toyota engineer behind the Toyota Production System. Photo: Toyota Motor Co. company history via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Picking those kits by hand is slow, repetitive work, and robots took it over in stages. Fixed automation came first: feeders and trays that present each part in a known position so a robot can grab it blind. ABB's IRB 360 FlexPicker, a fast delta robot, picks small items from moving conveyors using PickMaster vision software that tells it where each item lies. Mixed parts in a deep bin stayed the hard case for years. When Amazon launched its first Picking Challenge in 2015, research teams from around the world built robots to take items off a warehouse shelf on their own.

ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker robots picking chocolate balls at Delicato. Photo: ABB

Robotic kitting today: vision, AI and mobile robots

Robot vision drew fresh funding this autumn. On 30 September 2026 the Paris company Inbolt announced $12.5 million in funding led by Shift4Good, bringing its total to $34 million. Inbolt sells 3D vision and AI software that lets a robot see where a part really is and correct its path in real time. It says the system runs on Fanuc, ABB, Kuka, Yaskawa, Comau and Universal Robots arms, and is deployed on more than 200 robots in over 100 factories for customers such as Bosch, Ford, Stellantis and Toyota.

ABB's Robotic Item Picker moves an item between bins, guided by its own camera. Photo: ABB

ABB's own answer for picking mixed items is the Robotic Item Picker, launched in April 2023. Machine vision and AI find a grasp point on each item, and a suction gripper lifts it into the right bin, with no data about the items needed in advance. ABB quotes up to 1,400 picks an hour at more than 99.5 percent efficiency, and the module fits an IRB 1200, IRB 1300 or IRB 2600 robot, with payloads up to 3 kg. It was built for warehouses, but picking items from a mixed bin into a tote is the same job as kitting.

The Robotic Item Picker cell, launched in 2023, with a small ABB robot between its pick and place bins. Photo: ABB

Kits also have to travel. ABB's Flexley Mover P603, launched in 2025, is an autonomous mobile robot that carries up to 1,500 kg, finds its way with Visual SLAM and stops within ±5 mm, and ABB names kitting and line supply among its uses. Packaging kits are getting robots too: MSD Sales and PAC Machinery will show a robotic kitting system joined to an automatic bagger at PACK EXPO in Chicago, 18 to 21 October 2026. For more on how robots see parts, read our post on 3D vision picking.

An ABB Flexley Mover P603 carrying stacked crates past machines in a factory. Photo: ABB

Where robotic kitting goes next, from car plants to parcels

In factories, kitting will follow product variety. EV lines, electronics plants and data center hardware all build many versions on one line, and every version needs a different kit. Vision systems like Inbolt's and ABB's Item Picker aim to let one cell handle new parts without weeks of reprogramming. Mobile robots then bring the finished kit to the station on time. A cell that combines an ABB arm, a picker and a Flexley Mover is technically possible today, though ABB has not described such a combined kitting line as a customer project.

The Flexley Mover P603 can carry up to 1,500 kg and finds its way with Visual SLAM. Photo: ABB

Kits reach homes too, as the bag of screws in flat pack furniture, a repair kit or a box of mixed products from an online order. These are built in warehouses and packaging plants, often by hand, and the PACK EXPO demonstration shows suppliers going after that work. Small, safe robots could help in smaller shops as well. An ABB cobot such as GoFa, which limits its force so it can work beside people, could sort parts into trays on a bench, though ABB has not offered it as a kitting product, so this is a possibility for now.

An ABB GoFa CRB 15000 cobot at a work table. Photo: ABB

Cost slows adoption first, since a vision cell, grippers and software cost more than a few carts and a part time worker. Reliability is next: shiny, bendy or tangled parts still beat many vision systems, and a missing screw in a kit is a defect. Then there are skills. Someone has to teach the robot each new part and test the cell, usually in simulation first with RobotStudio and then on the floor with tools such as graphical programming.

Setting up a picking job on a touch panel with ABB PickMaster Lite. Photo: ABB

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