Eyeglass Lens Lab Automation and ABB Robots

Every pair of prescription glasses starts as a blank that has to be cut, polished, coated and edged to one person's eyes. Optical lens manufacturing has gone from hand grinding in medieval Italy to the modern eyeglass lens lab, where lenses ride from machine to machine with hardly a human touch. This post follows that path: the first spectacle makers, the American factories and plastic lenses of the twentieth century, today's automated Rx labs and a robotic optics lab shown at MIT in September 2026. Then it looks at where ABB robots such as the IRB 1200 and the single arm YuMi could fit.

Workers grinding negative lenses for the Bureau of Aircraft Production at the American Optical Company, Southbridge, Massachusetts, 1917 to 1918. Photo: National Archives via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

How lenses were ground by hand and then in factories

Spectacles appeared in central Italy, probably in Pisa or Florence, by about 1290. The evidence is a sermon given in 1306 by the friar Giordano da Pisa, who said the art of making glasses had been found less than twenty years before. Venice soon had rules for selling them, and in 1320 its spectacle makers formed their own guild. For centuries after that, each lens was ground and polished by a craftsman working the glass against a curved tool, one piece at a time.

Signs outside one of the oldest ophthalmic optician shops in Rome, dating from 1886. Photo: Albarubescens / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Lens designs slowly grew more exact. Benjamin Franklin is usually credited with bifocals, and in 1825 the British astronomer George Airy designed the first lenses to correct astigmatism. Production moved into factories. At the American Optical Company in Southbridge, Massachusetts, rows of workers ground and polished lenses on powered spindles, and during the First World War the plant made glasses and goggles for American soldiers and lenses for the Bureau of Aircraft Production. The machines ran on power, but people still loaded and checked the lenses by hand.

A worker at the American Optical Company plant in Southbridge making eyeglasses and goggles for US soldiers, 1917 to 1918. Photo: National Archives via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Two changes in the middle of the century shaped the modern lab. PPG's Columbia Resins project developed the plastic CR-39 in 1940, and in 1947 the Armorlite Lens Company in California made the first CR-39 eyeglass lenses, about half the weight of glass. In 1953 Bernard Maitenaz patented the Varilux progressive lens, which the Société des Lunetiers, later Essilor, introduced in 1959. Varilux 2 followed in 1972 with a fully aspheric design and a new way of making it. Progressive and freeform lenses now have surfaces that only computer controlled machines can cut and polish.

An optician inspects a pair of eyeglasses in Finland, 1953. Photo: U. A. Saarinen / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Optical lens manufacturing today: automated Rx labs and robotic optics

A large Rx lab handles a steady stream of jobs, and almost every one is a different prescription. The lens moves from blocking to surfacing, polishing, engraving, coating and edging, often in a job tray on a conveyor. Machine builders now pack several of these steps into one cell. Schneider Optical Machines says its Modulo Center ONE surfaces 80 lenses an hour in 7 square meters, with four handling systems passing lenses from station to station, and its Pro version reaches 120 lenses an hour. Inspection is being automated too: in August 2025 EssilorLuxottica bought Automation & Robotics, a Belgian maker of automated lens quality control systems.

The Essilor lens plant in Ligny-en-Barrois, France, 2009. Photo: Ji-Elle / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Research labs are teaching robots to handle optics in a more general way. On 17 September 2026 MIT described a robotic optics laboratory in which a robot arm picks up mirrors and lenses held in QR coded housings, places them on a table and tunes their angle and position with micron scale precision. In one test it built a working laser cavity from parts laid out at random, in about 50 moves and under 30 minutes. The work is aimed at experiments, not eyeglasses, but it tackles the same problem a lens lab has: picking up a fragile optical part and putting it in exactly the right place.

A single-arm YuMi IRB 14050 in its cell on GE Healthcare's prototype line in Helsinki. Photo: ABB

ABB has not announced a robot project in an eyeglass lens lab, so here its role is a possibility rather than a case study. The new generation IRB 1200, launched in 2025 in 5, 7, 8 and 9 kg versions, is built for machine tending and small parts, with pose repeatability down to 0.011 mm on the OmniCore controller. That suits loading generators, polishers and edgers. For lighter work beside people, the single arm YuMi IRB 14050 carries up to 500 grams with a reach of 559 mm, enough for a lens in its holder.

The new generation ABB IRB 1200 with its OmniCore controller and FlexPendant, launched in 2025. Photo: ABB

Where optical lens manufacturing goes next, from labs to opticians

Labs are likely to keep moving toward lights out operation, with fewer people loading machines and more of them supervising. The gaps between machines are where robots fit best: lifting a lens from a tray into a generator, moving it to a polisher, then to a coating rack. A fenced IRB 1200 cell can do that today, and ABB's SafeMove software can shrink the fence where people need to work close by. Planning a cell like that is the kind of job described in our overview of ABB robot use cases.

An engineer programs a single-arm ABB YuMi at a work table. Photo: ABB

For people who wear glasses, the changes show up as faster delivery and lenses made for more complex prescriptions. Some opticians still edge and fit lenses in the shop, often on a tabletop edger, and that small scale work is harder to automate than a big lab. New products add pressure too. Coverage of EssilorLuxottica's Automation & Robotics deal tied it to quality standards in new segments such as wearables, and smart glasses with prescription lenses need the same cutting, coating and edging, with electronics added on top.

A Ghanaian optician fits a lens into a spectacle frame next to a tabletop lens edger, 2017. Photo: Gkbediako / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The open problems are cost, variety and skills. A robot cell has to pay for itself across jobs that are almost all different, and coatings demand clean, dust free handling. Each new lens design or tray change means new robot paths. Lab technicians who know lenses will need to learn robot programming, usually first in simulation with RobotStudio and then on the floor, where a cobot like GoFa can be taught by moving its arm by hand.

An ABB GoFa CRB 15000 cobot at a work table. Photo: ABB

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