Airbag Assembly Robot: From Hetrick to ABB IRB 1700

An airbag assembly robot has to put a folded cushion, an inflator and a sensor-triggered module together so that it fires in a few milliseconds, once, years after it left the factory, and it cannot be allowed to get that wrong. This post follows the airbag from its first patents to today's module lines, looks at where robots fold, handle and assemble the parts, and asks where ABB's new IRB 1700 family and older arms could fit. ABB has no public airbag project, so that part is a possibility.

A modern steering wheel with its airbag module behind the horn cover. Photo: Janipewter / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

From a torpedo-inspired patent to the 1998 mandate

The idea is older than the car airbag. A 1919 US patent by two Birmingham dentists, Arthur Parrott and Harold Round, covered inflatable bags for aeroplanes and other vehicles. For cars, John W. Hetrick filed on 5 August 1952, and US patent 2,649,311 was granted in August 1953. German engineer Walter Linderer filed in 1951. Both designs used compressed air, and research in the 1960s showed that compressed air could not fill a bag fast enough. Hetrick, a Navy industrial engineer who had worked with torpedoes, could not attract investment.

Crash test dummies seated before an NHTSA frontal test, the kind of testing that showed how fast an airbag must fill. Photo: MGA Research Corporation, NHTSA via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Two changes made the airbag practical. In 1967 Allen K. Breed invented a ball-in-tube crash sensor that could fire an airbag in under 30 milliseconds, and a small charge of sodium azide replaced compressed air for the first time. In the early 1970s General Motors began offering airbag cars, starting with government fleet Chevrolet Impalas in 1973, and in 1974 it made its Air Cushion Restraint System a production option on large Cadillac, Buick and Oldsmobile models. GM dropped the option for 1977, citing a lack of consumer interest.

The interior of a 1975 Cadillac Coupe de Ville with GM's Air Cushion Restraint System. Photo: That Hartford Guy / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The second wave arrived in the 1980s. In 1981 Mercedes-Benz offered an airbag in West Germany on its S-Class (W126), with sensors that tightened the belts before the bag fired, so the two worked as one system. Chrysler became the first US automaker to fit a driver airbag as standard in 1988. A 1991 US law then required driver and front passenger airbags in passenger cars and light trucks built after 1 September 1998. By early 1993 Chrysler alone had built its 4-millionth airbag-equipped vehicle, so module volumes were already in the millions.

The interior of a 1981 Mercedes-Benz W126 S-Class, the car that offered an airbag in West Germany that year. Photo: DirebearHugs / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Folding, fitting and tracing a safety part today

A module has three main parts: a fabric cushion, an inflation module and an impact sensor feeding a control unit, and a modern vehicle may carry up to ten modules. Folding is the delicate step. Autoliv patents describe folding combs that pleat the cushion like an accordion before it goes into its canister, and another patent describes a fixture that moves a cushion one fold at a time to limit tension and wear. I found no public account of a specific line where robot arms do this work, so treat the exact split between folding machines and arms as unconfirmed.

A driver airbag folded inside a steering wheel with its cover removed. Photo: Alexauto321 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Traceability matters because airbags are safety parts, and recalls show it. On 16 October 2026 Repairer Driven News reported that NHTSA cannot confirm the status of the remaining 9% of more than 67 million recalled Takata airbags, which the agency links to 28 deaths and at least 400 injuries in the United States. NHTSA tells owners to check for open recalls at nhtsa.gov. A robot cell cannot fix a decade-old inflator, but it can record what it assembled on every module, which is one reason these lines are good candidates for automation.

A passenger airbag lying deployed on the dashboard after an NHTSA crash test. Photo: NHTSA via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

ABB announced the IRB 1700 and IRB 1700ID in mid October 2026 and showed them at the China International Industry Fair in Shanghai. The five variants carry 6 kg to 12 kg, repeat a path to 0.03 mm, reach joint speeds of 700 degrees per second and claim up to 20% shorter cycle times than comparable robots. ABB lists material handling, arc welding and machine tending, plus AI server rack assembly. Airbag work is not on that list. Still, a fast, precise, compact arm with cables routed inside is the kind of robot that could load housings and place inflators, if a customer chose to.

An ABB IRB 1700 in a sanding demonstration at the China International Industry Fair, October 2026. Photo: ABB

Where airbag robots go next

Cars keep adding airbags in new places, including seat-mounted, knee, pedestrian and inflatable seat belt designs, so a line may build many variants. That favors robots that can be retooled quickly. ABB's OmniCore EyeMotion with the AI Robot Trainer, presented in October 2026, claims to cut commissioning time by up to 90% when paired with automatic collision-free path planning. ABB's figure is for vision applications and says nothing about airbags, but changing part types and lighting are what a variant-heavy module line faces.

A crash test showing driver and passenger airbags deployed with seat belts in use. Photo: Transport for NSW / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

For homes, the benefit is indirect: better traceability, and fewer defective modules reaching drivers. For factories, the open problems are cost, safety and skills. Inflators work through a pyrotechnic process, so any cell handling live units needs strict guarding. Collaborative arms such as the GoFa and SafeMove zone monitoring are the tools ABB offers for sharing space with people. Small manual steps such as seating a connector are hard for robots too, as our post on wire harness assembly explains.

ABB robots working on a car body in final assembly with cameras and force sensing. Photo: ABB

Programs for a cell like this are usually built and tested first in RobotStudio, where cycle times and reach can be checked before any inflator is touched. Airbag lines also sit next to other safety-critical interior work, such as car seat manufacturing. My expectation is that robots will take over more handling and assembly steps while dedicated machines keep the folding, and that every module will carry a record of how it was built, so a future recall can be narrowed to the parts that actually need replacing.

Using an AR headset to check an ABB GoFa cell before it is built. Photo: ABB

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