Ice Resurfacing Robot: From Zamboni to ABB

For seventy years, a fresh sheet of ice has meant someone driving a boxy machine in slow ovals between periods. In September The Athletic reported on a driverless machine doing that job at the Colorado Avalanche practice rink, which moves the ice resurfacing robot out of the lab and onto a working rink. This post follows the job from crews with hoses and squeegees to Frank Zamboni's 1949 machine and on to battery machines that steer themselves. It also looks at where ABB robots and mobile robots could fit, and at what still holds the idea back at rinks and in backyards.

A Zamboni resurfacing the ice at Hobey Baker Memorial Rink in Princeton. Photo: Kenneth C. Zirkel / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

How rinks were flooded by hand before the Zamboni

Before machines, new ice took a crew. Frank Zamboni's Iceland Skating Rink in Paramount, California, opened in January 1940 with about 20,000 square feet of ice. To resurface it, workers scraped the surface, washed it, squeegeed off the slush and then laid down a thin coat of water. The job took about 90 minutes and up to five people. Outdoor rinks got rougher treatment. In January 1943 firemen and volunteers at the Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming flooded their rink with fire hoses, which is still how many backyard rinks are made.

Firemen and volunteers haul a hose to flood a skating rink at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, in January 1943. Photo: Tom Parker, National Archives via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Zamboni came from the refrigeration and block ice business and wanted his rink to turn over faster. In 1947, after years of work, he built a machine on an army surplus Willys jeep chassis that shaved, washed and squeegeed the ice in one pass, with a conveyor carrying the shavings to a tank. The blade and the handling gave him trouble, so he started again on another surplus chassis and arrived at the Model A in 1949. With it, one person could resurface the rink in about 15 minutes. The patent, US 2,642,679, was granted on 23 June 1953.

A Zamboni ice resurfacer with its driver at work on an indoor rink. Photo: mark6mauno / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The recipe has barely changed since. A heavy conditioner at the back shaves the top layer with a long blade, an auger moves the snow into a tank, and wash water and a thin layer of hot water follow behind. Zamboni's HD series of 1964 added a vertical screw conveyor and hydraulic snow dumping, and that layout became the industry standard. Rivals followed. Andrew Schlupp founded Resurfice in Elmira, Ontario, in 1967 and built the Olympia line, and the Italian firm Engo began making resurfacers in 1980. Battery electric models now run alongside propane and petrol ones.

A battery powered Zamboni Electric 552 at Bolidenhallen in Sweden. Photo: Calle Eklund/V-wolf / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The ice resurfacing robot arrives at an NHL practice rink

This autumn's news came from Centennial, Colorado. On 23 September The Athletic reported that a driverless machine is resurfacing the ice at the Family Sports Center, the practice rink used by the Avalanche. Denver station Denver7 said South Suburban Parks and Recreation got the machine through a partnership with a company bringing it to North America. It scans the ice to check that it is thick enough, and a unit like it costs around $100,000. Ice supervisor Weston Woodward called it "a valuable tool in the toolbox for our operations."

The WM technics Mammoth, a resurfacer offered with the Autopilot 3D self-driving system. Photo: WM ice technics / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Most of the engineering goes into keeping the ice at the right thickness while the machine drives. WM technics, a maker in South Tyrol, Italy, sells a self-driving model called Mammoth with a system it calls Autopilot 3D. Sensors on the machine and around the arena feed a computer, a laser levelling system sets the blade depth, and staff choose water dosage and speed in a phone app. The company says each extra inch of ice can add up to 6 percent to cooling demand. ABB deals with a similar mapping problem in factories, where its Flexley Mover AMRs find their way with 3D Visual SLAM instead of fixed tracks.

The ABB Flexley Mover P604, which navigates with 3D Visual SLAM. Photo: ABB

ABB does not build ice resurfacers, and no source says it supplies parts for one. What follows is a possibility. Resurfacer frames, water tanks and conditioners are welded steel parts made in small batches, the kind of work ABB's GoFa Cobot Arc Welding Package and IRB welding cells do in other plants. Blade changes, board brush checks and end of line testing are other candidates. Engineers who want to try this would usually build and test the cell first in RobotStudio, and more examples of what the arms already do are on the ABB robot use cases page.

ABB's GoFa Cobot Arc Welding Package on a welding table. Photo: ABB

What comes next for driverless ice at rinks and at home

Staffing is what pushes rinks toward automation. In 2024 Mike Zamboni, engineering product development manager and the fourth generation of his family at the company, told VenuesNow that experienced drivers are retiring faster than new ones arrive. He also warned that a self-driving machine is "not as simple as putting it out on the ice to help reduce your workforce." Carnegie Mellon students tried one route in 2022 with the Pittsburgh Penguins: a second Zamboni followed a lead machine driven by a person, with a safety driver aboard the follower.

An electric Olympia resurfacer on the ice at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. Photo: Chase N. / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

At home things move slower. Backyard rinks are still flooded with a garden hose or a hand pulled resurfacer, usually late on cold nights when nobody wants to stand outside. WM technics compares its autopilot to lawn robots and floor cleaning robots, and that comparison points to the likely path for small rinks: a compact electric machine that follows a boundary and lays down thin water. Nobody sells such a home robot today, so any timeline is a guess.

Children playing hockey on a backyard rink. Photo: Mike Gifford / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Cost, safety and skills will decide how fast this spreads. A machine at around $100,000 has to beat the cost of a part time driver. Skaters, gates and staff share the surface, so a driverless machine needs reliable stops and clearly marked zones, the same thinking behind ABB SafeMove and the zone visualization tools for robot cells. Ice technicians will spend less time driving and more time reading data on temperature, thickness and water use, and that work still needs training.

ABB's GoFa cobot is guided by hand and stops when it senses contact. Photo: ABB

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