ABB Robotics invests in vision AI company

ABB Robotics has announced an investment in California-based LandingAI to accelerate the transformation of vision AI, aiming to making it faster, more intuitive, and accessible to a broader range of users. This collaboration will integrate LandingAI’s vision AI capabilities, like LandingLens, into ABB Robotics’ software suite, which the company says marks a milestone in ABB’s journey towards truly autonomous and versatile robots.

“This announcement is the latest in our decade-long journey to innovate and commercialise AI, benefitting our customers by enhancing robot versatility and autonomy to expand the use of robots beyond traditional manufacturing,” said Sami Atiya, President of ABB Robotics & Discrete Automation. “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.

“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.”

As part of the collaboration, ABB has made a venture capital investment through ABB Robotics Ventures, the strategic venture capital unit of ABB Robotics, driving collaboration and investment in innovative early-stage companies that are shaping the future of robotics and automation. Financial details of the investment were not disclosed.

LandingAI’s LandingLens is a vision AI platform that enables the rapid training of vision AI systems to recognise and respond to objects, patterns or defects with no complex programming or AI expertise required.

Through this collaboration, ABB Robotics aims to reduce robot vision AI training and deployment time by up to 80%. Once deployed, system integrators and end users can retrain the AI for new scenarios on their own. ABB says this is a critical step in scaling robot adoption in dynamic environments, beyond traditional manufacturing, especially in fast-moving sectors such as logistics, health care and food and beverage.

ABB is already piloting LandingAI’s technology and actively working to integrate it into existing vision AI applications, including item-picking, sorting, depalletising and quality inspection.

“AI is advancing quickly, creating many opportunities, but also requiring us to keep learning and adapting new skills,” said Dan Maloney, Chief Executive Officer of LandingAI. “By combining LandingAI’s vision AI capabilities with ABB’s robots and software, we can make automation more accessible. This makes it easier for businesses to deploy and scale intelligent robotic systems that are practical and useful.”

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