ABB Robots and Toyota's Worker-Taught Robots

From Toyoda's 1924 self-stopping loom to Toyota's plan for 400,000 robots from 2028, and how ABB's Wizard and GoFa hand guiding let workers teach robots.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/25/20261 min read

In 1924, Sakichi Toyoda built the Type G automatic loom. It changed shuttles without stopping, and it stopped itself when a thread broke, so one weaver could look after many machines. That habit of a machine that stops and calls a person became jidoka, one of the ideas behind the Toyota Production System.

Black and orange cast-iron weaving loom with white cloth rolls on a red museum platform
Black and orange cast-iron weaving loom with white cloth rolls on a red museum platform

Sakichi Toyoda's 1924 Type G automatic loom on display in a museum. Photo: Morio / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Car plants were still full of hands. In this 1945 photo from a British factory, workers fit parts to cars as they roll down the line. Over the following decades robots took over most welding and painting, but final assembly, with its clips, cables and trim, stayed largely human work.

Black and white photo of workers fitting parts to a row of cars on an assembly line
Black and white photo of workers fitting parts to a row of cars on an assembly line

Workers on a car assembly line in Britain, 1945. Photo: Ministry of Information / Imperial War Museums via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

In September, Automotive News reported that Toyota plans to deploy about 400,000 robots from 2028, 150,000 in its own plants and 250,000 at group companies, and could spend up to ¥1 trillion a year on it. Its wheeled humanoid, Eley, learns from workers wearing finger-shaped jigs, and it learned to fold T-shirts almost perfectly after 1,500 sessions in two weeks.

Factory entrance with a large Motomachi sign on a building under a blue sky
Factory entrance with a large Motomachi sign on a building under a blue sky

Toyota's Motomachi plant in Toyota City, Japan, 2019. Photo: Evelyn-rose / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

ABB robots already work in final assembly, handling heavy or awkward parts on car body lines. ABB has also spent years making robots easier for line staff to program. Its Wizard software lets someone build a program for a single-arm YuMi or a GoFa by dragging blocks on the FlexPendant screen, with no code.

White ABB robot on a rail next to a dark car body shell on a yellow cart
White ABB robot on a rail next to a dark car body shell on a yellow cart

An ABB robot working beside a car body in final assembly. Photo: ABB

For paths that are hard to describe, a worker can guide a GoFa by hand, or use ABB's Easy Teach Device, and the robot records the motion. It is the same idea as Toyota's jigs. The person who knows the job teaches the robot directly.

ABB single-arm YuMi robot at a workbench with a FlexPendant showing block programming
ABB single-arm YuMi robot at a workbench with a FlexPendant showing block programming

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

The Toyota plan reminds me of that old loom. The machine does the repetitive part and the person decides how the job should be done. If a humanoid can learn to fold T-shirts at work, I suspect the same skill will turn up in home robots, and plenty of us would gladly give up folding laundry.

Gloved hands guiding a tool held by a white ABB GoFa robot arm
Gloved hands guiding a tool held by a white ABB GoFa robot arm

Teaching a GoFa by hand with ABB's Easy Teach Device. Photo: ABB

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