ABB Invests in LandingAI to Apply Generative AI to Robotic Vision
ABB Robotics has invested in California-based LandingAI to accelerate its use of vision AI. A key goal of this investment involves the integration of LandingAI’s vision AI tech, such as LandingLens, into ABB Robotics’ software suite. LandingLens is a vision AI platform that enables the rapid training of vision AI systems to recognize and respond to objects, patterns or defects with no complex programming or AI expertise required. ABB said the goal of this investment is to advance its progress towards truly autonomous and versatile robots.
Through this collaboration, ABB Robotics plans to reduce robot vision AI training and deployment time by up to 80%. Once deployed, ABB Robotics said system integrators and end users can retrain the AI for new scenarios on their own. This speed of deployment and retraining capability is “a critical step in scaling robot adoption in dynamic environments, beyond traditional manufacturing, especially in fast-moving sectors such as logistics, healthcare and food and beverage,” according to ABB Robotics.
ABB is already piloting LandingAI’s technology and integrating it into its existing vision AI applications, such as item-picking, sorting, depalletizing and quality inspection. The capital investment in LandingAI was made through ABB Robotics Ventures, the strategic venture capital unit of ABB Robotics. Financial details of the investment were not disclosed.
“The demand for AI in robotics is driven by the need for greater flexibility, faster commissioning cycles and a shortage of the specialist skills needed to program and operate robots,” said Sami Atiya, president of ABB Robotics and Discrete Automation. “Our collaboration with LandingAI will mean installation and deployment time is done in hours instead of weeks, allowing more businesses to automate smarter, faster and more efficiently.”
