ABB Robots and Mobile Yarn Handling in Textile Mills

From 1909 doffer boys to a TIAGo Pro robot lifting yarn cones at CETRIKO, and how ABB's Flexley Mover, GoFa and mobile YuMi fit textile mill logistics.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/26/20261 min read

In 1909 Lewis Hine photographed doffer boys at the Globe Cotton Mill in Augusta, Georgia. They pulled full bobbins off the spinning frames and put empty ones on, over and over, then carried the yarn to the next room by hand.

Sepia photo of young boys standing beside long spinning frames in a cotton mill

Doffer boys at the Globe Cotton Mill, Augusta, Georgia, 1909. Photo: Lewis Hine / Library of Congress (public domain)

Mills later automated spinning and winding, and modern frames doff their own bobbins. Between the machines, though, people still do much of the moving: lifting yarn cones onto creels and pushing carts of fabric rolls from one hall to the next. At Sjølingstad, a preserved wool mill in Norway, the cones still sit on open shelves.

Two shelves holding cones of coloured wool yarn

Yarn cones on shelves at the Sjolingstad wool mill, Norway. Photo: Bjoertvedt / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Mobile robots are starting on that in-between work. In September, Design World, citing the IFR, described a pilot at the Spanish textile maker CETRIKO, where a PAL Robotics TIAGo Pro mobile manipulator lifts and places yarn cones, a repetitive job operators used to do by hand.

White two-armed mobile robot with a head camera on a round wheeled base

A PAL Robotics TIAGo++ mobile manipulator, an earlier model in the TIAGo family. Photo: PAL Robotics / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB already sells parts of that system. The Flexley Mover P603 is an autonomous mobile robot that finds its way around a plant with Visual SLAM, so it could carry crates of cones between machines without floor markers. Its bigger sibling, the P604, lifts heavier loads from underneath.

Low white ABB autonomous mobile robot carrying a pallet of dark crates

An ABB Flexley Mover P603 AMR carrying stacked crates. Photo: ABB

At the machine itself, an ABB GoFa cobot can load and unload stations while people work nearby. ABB has also shown a mobile YuMi concept, a two-armed robot on a wheeled base designed to move between lab stations on its own.

ABB GoFa cobot arm with a gripper next to metal parts at a machine

An ABB GoFa cobot tending a machine station. Photo: ABB

I expect textile mills to follow labs and warehouses, with carts that drive themselves and arms that ride on them. The doffer boys' job has mostly moved into the machines. Carrying yarn from one machine to the next looks like the part robots take over next, and I doubt anyone will miss it.

Two-armed ABB YuMi robot mounted on a white mobile base in a hospital lab corridor

ABB's mobile YuMi concept, a two-armed robot on a wheeled base, in a lab corridor. Photo: ABB

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