ABB automated robotics to support Volvo Cars sustainability

ABB announced the strengthening of its long-standing partnership with Volvo Cars to supply more than 1,300 robots and functional packages to build the next generation of electric vehicles. This will support the Swedish car manufacturer to achieve its ambitious sustainability targets.

This agreement includes functional packages covering various production tasks, from spot-welding, riveting, and dispensing to flow drilling and ultrasonic weld inspection. Each package is a ready-to-use, customer-proven combination of hardware, software and services and will be implemented at Volvo Cars’ facilities in Torslanda, Sweden and Daqing, China. Alongside the hardware and functional packages, ABB’s latest range of OmniCore robot controllers will help to deliver energy savings of up to 20 percent at sites due to their highly efficient power electronics and use of regenerative braking within the robot.

During the deployment, ABB will ensure production remains uninterrupted through the use of its RobotStudio planning and programming software platform to visualize and optimize the deployment before the robots are installed. By developing and validating the required automation systems in a virtual space, Volvo Cars and ABB will create solutions that can be engineered once but deployed multiple times.