Automation Overkill – ABB IRB 340 Robotic Croissant Picker

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Is is me or is this ABB IRB 340 Robotic Croissant Picker overkill? I am all for automating tasks but I have seen so many lines that are very simple and do the same task. It would seem obvious to funnel all of the items into a single stream and kick out the rejects as they go by. I have to admit that the machine looks to be operating quite well for such a complex task though. Have a look as a few videos after the jump for some other great examples of this ABB machine in action performing other tasks.

 

 

 

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28 Comments


  1. wow, if it wasnt for thouse machine I wonder how many oompa loompa you will need to do as much work.


  2. Nevermind the oompa loompa (LOL though) how about how many peoples’ jobs has this machine killed?


  3. I have visited a factory of ABB in Germany. I never knew that they were manufacturing such kewl things.

    I just were at the transformators-factory.
    Very interesting kinematic!!

    Greez from Germany,
    Majus


  4. Soooo… hungry


  7. Too bad i couldn’t get a hold of a few of those and program them to make me breakfast… 😀


  8. LOL, you would have your breakfast made in about 1.4 seconds. 🙂


  9. Wowser, major overkill indeed. But they’re very cool spider-esque robots.
    Notice one thing though – at the end of the vid, it took EVERY ONE of the croissants off the conveyor belt – how more redundant could it get!?
    They should bring me in for consultancy, I would get rid of the robots, and have the incoming belt turned 90 degrees onto the ‘good croissant’ belts. And I’d only charge them 10,000 euros for the advice, a bargain in comparison!!


  10. wohooow swiss killer robots own 😀
    amazing robot… damn fast and exact.
    sry for the jobs which were killed, but we all want to have the lowest price possible 4 everything….


  11. This is not overkill… overkill would be replacing a person with a machine that did the exact same performance and level of accuracy… This machine is far far faster and many times more acfturate than any human can be.. and will work all day at the same pace without stopping. and most likly cost less per year to run than paying a person


  12. This is not overkill… overkill would be replacing a person with a machine that did the exact same performance and level of accuracy… This machine is far far faster and many times more actuate than any human can be.. and will work all day at the same pace without stopping. and most likely cost less per year to run than paying a person.


  13. So Elepski.. what do you do for a living that can be replaced with a robot to make things “Cheeper”. Once enough jobs are replaced, no one will be able to buy anything “cheeper” because you won’t have a job. I am all for robots doing jobs that are dangerous for humans, but this demonstrates that you can be replaced by technology. I am impressed with the machine but not the fact that quite a few people are losing thier job


  14. What I never get is….Don’t the ugly croissants taste just as good as the pretty ones? I never got why food companies don’t sell the “less than perfect” stuff. It all turns into **** at the end anyway. ROFLMAO!!!


  15. In fact, Trent.. I could be replaced by a just a computer.. but there is a level of human intuition in my job that no machine can mimic. But in the case of the super croissant sorter… it seems to be able to do the jobs multitudes faster and with perfect accuracy. On the note of machines taking the place of peoples jobs…. take a lesson from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”… father has line job.. father get replaced by machine… father ends up maintaining the machine. Factories WILL retool to remain competitive. People must retool to remain competitive too.


  16. Well said thank you…


  17. Two points:

    1. About 30-40 mins into the film Koyaanisqatsi it explores a Twinkie factory, and shows some workers doing the exact same task. They’re about the same speed as these robots, for whatever that’s worth. Hard to fight for that though when the production floor manager is jonsing for some flashy cool toys to “reduce” production costs by some marginal long term amount.

    2. The only cause for the sorting in the first place is marketing… Allows them to push more units to distributors and buyers if they can give product benefit statements such as “Our croissants are scanned and selected so that only those with the best shape, texture, and consistency will make it to your customers’ plates” etc… Such is the “progress” of capitalistic competition, which is self-referential.

    Regardless, being the geek that I am, I still have to admit those are really cool robots, very impressive technology.


  18. I’m so so sick of hearing that robos replace people, they DO NOT replace people they supplement people. We brought in a new Fanuc robot at the plant to clip runners from an injection molded part, there were literally women crying when they saw it being installed, now THOSE VERY SAME women have easier jobs that aren’t as stressful and require less concentration and it has lowered the machine scrap rate from 8% to .3% . The plant is now more productive, runs less scrap, a more consistent product, and is productive enough to now run two jobs in the same press which required TWO MORE PEOPLE TO BE HIRED!!!! Elepski stated exactly what i was thinking also with the Chocolate factorie movie, not only are we able to run two jobs in one press that before could barely keep up running one, we hired two more operators to run the other jobs, and it also requires programming, reteaching positions etc that requires more maintenance time which will lead to more maintenance personnel being hired. Hey, i guess we should all go back to hand churned butter, because just one industrial churning machine took the jobs of tens of thousands butter churners when it was first implemented. poor butter churners…


  19. I think the money would have been better spent on a machine that makes more consistent croissants.


  20. Robots is and will be THE chance keeping industries within the country instead of buying imports from low salary countries. Think it thru and realize how many jobs they save. Prfect example of how a million croissants a day are fed into the wrapper machines. The robots ensure you place one croissant in each pocket for the wrapper machine, it is not an overkill but the only way of cost effecient placing the croissants where they need to be. This could not be done in a simple way without robots, the croissants would not jump by themselves into correct positions, thats what the robots are there for


  21. WE WANT TO BUY CROISSANT AND COOKIES MACHINES AND THE KNOW HOW TO PRODUCE SUCH ITEMS.








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