The idea of the Giftwrapper, i.e., an ABB Yumi robot that wraps Christmas gifts, was conceived by the marketing company Lowe Brindfors to promote sales before Christmas for the Swedish branch of the home electronics chain Mediamarkt (nowadays Power). The idea was supported by ABB that provided a robot on loan, but the actual programming and system integration was performed by Cognibotics.
Due to time constraints, ordinary ABB Rapid was the only available interface to the robot, and the entire sequence was therefore a standard position-based robot program, i.e., without any external sensing. In other words, the robot accomplished the wrapping being both blind and without a sense of touch. Some robustness towards uncertainties was achieved by manually positioning the package during the process, utilizing that the robot has two arms, and by using cardboard spatulas, with an inherent passive compliance, for some folding operations.
Each of the two arms of the ABB Yumi robot has seven degrees of freedom, which mimics the kinematics of a human arm. The seventh degree of freedom makes it possible to move the elbow while keeping the tool center point still. This feature was essential for the Giftwrapper, as the elbow could be used for keeping the box in place while the tool center point was fixing the fold until the other arm could secure it with a piece of tape.
It is now nearly a decade since the Giftwrapper toured Sweden in 2015, visiting 18 different MediaMarkt stores. A lot of publicity was generated, including newspaper articles and appearances in both radio and national television.
Four companies in Sweden are acknowledged for inventing and enabling the GiftWrapper application. The GiftWrapper application was initially suggested for (and then supported by) MediaMarkt to promote sales before Christmas, by the marketing company Lowe Brindfors in Stockholm. ABB Robotics provided a YuMi robot on loan for the work, plus valuable support for the specialties of YuMi programming. The application was developed and exhibited by Cognibotics as a system integrator.
Robotic Gift Wrapping or a Glance at the Present State in Santa's Workshop
Did implementation work of the application