Andie Zhang on Why Industrial Robots Still Beat Humanoids

Andie Zhang (0:01)

Humanoid robots are designed to do many things. They're supposed to be able to do A, B, C and D. The problem is that they don't do any of these things very well.

My career has been driven by doing something new. I was from technology, I wanted to try business, and then collaborative robots was appealing because it was new. I was the first person responsible for co-bots at ABB.

Brian Heater (0:22)

Majority of roles that I see humanoids fulfilling requires people to be around, and safety is another huge mountain that needs to be climbed.

Andie Zhang (0:31)

Absolutely. Just because it looks like a human doesn't mean that it has this type of safety that is required for safe human robot collaboration. Collaborative robots that I have been working on is intended to be put into exactly these places where humans are working.

Brian Heater (0:48)

Do you think that at any point in the foreseeable future that the big heavy industrial arm is going away?

Andie Zhang (0:55)

I think for industrial manufacturing, cost, ROI, efficiency, reliability is always going to the main KPIs. And there, a humanoid robot is not going to be competitive.

Brian Heater (1:06)

Uptime is a really big issue with robots. You do need people there to interface with the robots. And is there a role that companies can play to better position the people in those factories to interact with the robots and to be on the other side of automation?

Hello and welcome to Automated. My name is Brian Heater. I am the managing editor at the Association for Advanced Automation. Coming up, we have the second of two episodes recorded on site at the inaugural Davos Tech Summit in Switzerland over the summer. Andie Zhang is the Global Portfolio and Technology Manager for Collaborative Robots at ABB. She's got a lot of words in her title, which means she's very important, which is headquartered, one extremely beautiful train ride away in Zurich. Thanks to her, thanks to ABB, thanks to the event organizers for helping set up that interview and getting some room. Thanks to you, as always, for tuning in. If you're enjoying the show, you can help us out by liking and subscribing and checking out our newsletter over at Automated.fm. In the meantime, please enjoy this conversation with Andie Zhang of ABB.

You studied engineering?

Andie Zhang (2:32)

Yes.

Brian Heater (2:32)

Originally. I did. Then you went back a couple of decades later, it seems like, for management, is that right?

Andie Zhang (2:42)

Yes, you're right. Actually, I was born in China. When I was 10 years old, we moved to Sweden because my father was doing his Ph.D. in engineering at KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

And because both my parents are engineers, so I grew up thinking, okay, that's the only way to go. So I also graduated from KTH.

Brian Heater (3:02)

I was curious where you grew up. You grew up in the hometown of ABB. And anytime you look at one of these kind of big multinational corporations that is in like everything, they always, you go to their like Wikipedia page, and it's always like in 1880s, you know, it started as like these kind of things.

So long history, but usually, you know, somebody like, you know, it'll be like Nintendo, you know, they started as like a playing card company, or I think like Nokia started as like a shoe rubber company. But ABB was pretty much like electronics. Well, actually, am I wrong?

Andie Zhang (3:43)

From the beginning, the robotics part of ABB was ASEA in Sweden. So that's where it started. Actually, it started even further back with building power in Sweden. There's a hydro power plant still there in Västerås. But then the BB part actually comes from Brown Bavary, which is a Swiss company. In 1988, ASEA, the A and the BB merged into ABB. So that's where we get ABB today.

Brian Heater (4:08)

Yeah, part of the reason why I ask is because the A and the BB both have this more than 100 year long history. And I'm curious how big of a presence it was in the town that you grew up in.

Andie Zhang (4:21)

Oh, wow. In Västerås, ABB was everywhere. ABB also went through phases of expansion where we acquired a lot of companies, from nuclear power to building trains, et cetera. And then also divesting some of those businesses and focusing on the core.

Brian Heater (4:36)

So in terms of engineering, specifically, what were you studying? What was your focus?

Andie Zhang (4:40)

Yes. So actually, this was so long time ago that it was for sure before the iPhone, even before color phones. So it was black and white, not the iPhone.