Teaching ABB Robots by Showing Them the Job

From Unimate to Skild AI's video-trained S1: how ABB's Wizard block programming and GoFa lead-through teaching make robots easier to train at work and home.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/23/20261 min read

The first industrial robots learned by being walked through a job. An operator stepped a Unimate through each motion and it recorded the positions to replay them. By the 1980s most robots were programmed line by line in code, usually by a specialist with a teach pendant and a lot of patience.

Black and white photo of an early Unimate robot arm pouring coffee for a seated woman
Black and white photo of an early Unimate robot arm pouring coffee for a seated woman

A Unimate robot pours coffee at the Biltmore Hotel, Los Angeles, 1967. Photo: Frank Q. Brown, Los Angeles Times / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Paying for that specialist kept robots in big plants. For smaller users ABB offers Wizard Easy Programming, a free drag-and-drop tool on the FlexPendant built on Blockly. Blocks like "move" and "pick" turn into ABB's RAPID code as you place them. It started on YuMi and now runs on OmniCore industrial robots too.

ABB single-arm YuMi robot at a work table next to a FlexPendant showing block code
ABB single-arm YuMi robot at a work table next to a FlexPendant showing block code

Programming a single-arm YuMi with Wizard on the FlexPendant. Photo: ABB

AI labs want robots to learn by watching. On September 14, Skild AI unveiled S1, a model that copies a task from a single video. In one test only 11 minutes passed between recording a person potting a plant and the robot starting the job. Skild reports a 66 percent success rate on tasks the model hadn't seen before.

Two PR2 two-armed research robots standing in a lab
Two PR2 two-armed research robots standing in a lab

PR2 research robots, used for years to study household manipulation. Photo: Oleg Alexandrov / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

ABB's cobots already use a hands-on version of that idea. With lead-through programming you grab a GoFa or YuMi arm, move it where it should go and save the point. Joint torque sensors make the arm easy to push by hand, and they also make it stop when it bumps into a person.

Woman guiding an ABB GoFa cobot arm by hand over a table
Woman guiding an ABB GoFa cobot arm by hand over a table

Lead-through teaching: moving an ABB GoFa arm by hand. Photo: ABB

Unusual jobs still need code. Wizard's Skill Creator lets integrators package their own blocks, and RobotStudio lets engineers test a program in simulation before the robot touches a real part. For routine pick-and-place, though, a technician can now set up the robot on the pendant screen.

Hand touching an ABB FlexPendant screen showing colored drag-and-drop program blocks
Hand touching an ABB FlexPendant screen showing colored drag-and-drop program blocks

Wizard Easy Programming blocks on an ABB FlexPendant. Photo: ABB

Nobody at home is going to write code, so a home robot will have to learn the way a new roommate does: watch you load the dishwasher once, then try it. Research robots like Willow Garage's PR2 practiced household tasks for years. I think a video-trained model running on safe cobot hardware is where this goes next.

PR2 robot with two grippers reaching toward colored cups on a table
PR2 robot with two grippers reaching toward colored cups on a table

A PR2 robot handling cups on a table. Photo: Willow Garage / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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