ABB PoWa Cobots and Robots from Vineyard to Winery

A new landscape maps 400+ crop robot makers as harvest begins. Here is how ABB's PoWa cobots could stack wine cases, from 1930 hand picking to robot cellars.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/24/20261 min read

At the end of September 1930, a press photographer in Argenteuil, just outside Paris, caught the grape harvest in full swing. Pickers bent between the rows with baskets on their backs, cutting every bunch by hand and carrying it out of the vineyard themselves.

Black and white photo of grape pickers with baskets on their backs among vine rows
Black and white photo of grape pickers with baskets on their backs among vine rows

Grape pickers with baskets at the harvest in Argenteuil, near Paris, September 1930. Photo: Agence Meurisse / BnF Gallica via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Machines arrived a piece at a time. Straddle harvesters that shake the vines and catch the berries now work many vineyards, and in the cellar, bottling lines fill, cork and label bottles at speed. Pruning in winter and stacking the finished cases still take a lot of people.

Blue grape harvesting machine straddling a row of green vines
Blue grape harvesting machine straddling a row of green vines

A Braud straddle harvester shaking grapes off the vines in Lombardy. Photo: Riccardo Pastore / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

On September 16, The Mixing Bowl and the California AgTech Alliance released the 2026 Crop Robotics Landscape. It maps more than 400 companies building robots for food crops, nearly 25 percent more than in 2024, with products for scouting, spraying, weeding and harvesting. Half of the companies are in Europe.

Rows of filled wine bottles moving along a steel conveyor in a bottling hall
Rows of filled wine bottles moving along a steel conveyor in a bottling hall

Chardonnay on the bottling line at Chateau Ste. Michelle, Washington. Photo: David Herrera / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

ABB comes into this at the winery end of the line. In April it launched PoWa, a cobot family with payloads from 7 to 30 kg and top speeds up to 5.8 m/s. ABB names palletizing and machine tending among PoWa's main jobs and says one can be unboxed and running within an hour.

Several white ABB PoWa cobot arms of different sizes on a dark stage
Several white ABB PoWa cobot arms of different sizes on a dark stage

ABB's PoWa cobot family, launched in April 2026 with payloads from 7 to 30 kg. Photo: ABB

Wineries in Germany and California already use cobots to stack cartons at the end of their bottling lines, and a 30 kg PoWa can lift a full case of wine. It runs on ABB's OmniCore controller and works with RobotStudio and Wizard, so a small cellar crew could set up a new pallet pattern without hiring a programmer.

White ABB PoWa arm with a flat black vacuum gripper in a factory hall
White ABB PoWa arm with a flat black vacuum gripper in a factory hall

An ABB PoWa cobot fitted with a vacuum gripper. Photo: ABB

I expect the vineyard and the cellar to meet in the middle, with field robots pruning and picking and cobots packing whatever comes off the line. Harvest will still need people who know the grapes, but fewer of them will spend September hauling baskets on their backs.

Man holding and guiding a white ABB PoWa cobot arm over a work table
Man holding and guiding a white ABB PoWa cobot arm over a work table

An engineer hand-guiding an ABB PoWa cobot. Photo: ABB

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