ABB robotic automation solutions to support Volvo Cars' sustainability targets

ABB will deploy its new family of ‘energy efficient’ large robots in Volvo Cars' facilities, which the company said will help deliver energy savings of up to 20 per cent due to their highly efficient power electronics and use of regenerative braking within the robot.

The agreement includes robotic functional packages, which ABB said will cover various production tasks, from spot-welding, riveting, and dispensing to flow drilling and ultrasonic weld inspection.

According to the technology company, each package is a ready-to-use, customer-proven combination of hardware, software and services.

The partners aim for deployment to begin in 2024, initially at Volvo Cars’ production sites in Torslanda, Sweden and Daqing, China.

ABB will employ its RobotStudio planning and programming software platform to visualise and optimise the deployment before the robots are installed. By developing and validating the required automation systems in a virtual space, Volvo Cars and ABB said they aim to create solutions that can be engineered once but deployed multiple times.

In a statement, Marc Segura, ABB Robotics president, said: “The automotive industry’s historic transformation, driven by increasing consumer demand for electric vehicles and a desire to operate more sustainably, is creating new opportunities as well as challenges for global manufacturers.

“This latest commitment from our partner Volvo Cars demonstrates our shared focus of delivering more sustainable manufacturing. Through our new, energy-efficient large robot family and OmniCore controllers we will help to deliver energy savings… at sites around the world.”

Volvo Cars and ABB said they have had a tradition of joint developments, with the shared aim of making the production of cars more efficient and to continuously improve the capabilities of industrial robots in this area.