Traffic Cone Robot: Road Crews, Cone Trucks and ABB

Every lane closure starts with someone putting cones on a live road. On motorways that person usually stands on the back of a slow moving truck, grabbing cones from a stack and dropping them at the right spacing while traffic passes a few metres away. A traffic cone robot aims to take that person off the road. This post follows the job from the first rubber cones of the 1940s to the automated cone machines tested in California and England, looks at the self-driving cones now being piloted in China, and asks where ABB robots and navigation technology could fit.

A line of cones closing a lane during bridge works on the M62 in England. Photo: Hullian111 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

From rubber cones to workers on the tailgate

The traffic cone itself is American. Charles D. Scanlon, who worked for the Los Angeles Street Painting Department, designed a rubber cone that would pop back upright after a glancing blow, and his patent was granted in 1943. Utilities picked the idea up. On 1 May 1959 the Pacific Gas and Electric Company adopted orange safety cones after an employee, Russell Storch, suggested them. Modern cones are usually made of brightly coloured thermoplastic, and PVC from recycled bottles can go into them.

A worn orange traffic cone next to stacked police no parking cones in London. Photo: Secretlondon / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

In Britain, cones arrived with the motorways. They were first used in 1958 on the Preston Bypass, which became part of the M6, where they replaced the paraffin burners that had marked the works. For decades after that, the method barely changed. According to Highways England, two people on the rear of a vehicle would work in tandem to lay and lift the cones, mostly at night and in all weathers, and a crew could lift up to 10 tonnes of equipment in one shift.

The Preston Bypass under construction in December 1958, the road where Britain first used traffic cones. Photo: Lancashire County Council / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Engineers in California started on the problem in the 1990s. The AHMCT research centre, a partnership between the University of California, Davis and Caltrans, assessed cone placement methods in a 1994 report and then built an Automated Cone Machine, documented in a 1997 report. The driver controls it from inside the cab, and the machine places or retrieves a lane closure of up to 100 cones at set spacings without anyone standing on the back of the truck. In 2005 the Traf-tech Corporation produced a commercial machine based on the AHMCT design.

An attenuator truck shields an Oregon DOT maintenance crew on Interstate 205 in Portland. Photo: Oregon Department of Transportation / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Cone laying vehicles and self-driving cones today

England tried the same idea at scale. In February 2020 Highways England showed two automated cone laying vehicles, one from Highway Care and one from King Highway Products, with Kier and HW Martin Traffic Management also on the project. The agency put £1.27 million into the work through its Innovation Designated Funds and set a minimum standard: each vehicle had to lay and collect at least 400 cones at a rate of one every 10 seconds, without adding risk for drivers or road users.

Cones and a traffic management vehicle at bridge works on the M62. Photo: Hullian111 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The newest approach drops the truck mechanism and moves the cone itself. On 28 September 2026 Gadget Review reported that several Chinese firms are testing wheeled traffic cones that roll off a response vehicle and drive into a line to close a lane. Operators steer them remotely over 4G or 5G or direct them locally, and some models reportedly navigate on their own. Developers claim a lane closure in under 10 seconds against 20 to 30 minutes by hand, but the article notes that the systems are still pilots and that these claims have not been checked independently.

Police use cones to close a lane after an accident on the Bang Na Trat Highway in Thailand. Photo: Khaosaming / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

ABB does not make cone placement robots, and we know of no ABB project in road work. Its products overlap with the task in two places. The cone stacks on a cone truck are a pick and place job of the kind an IRB 460 or IRB 660 palletizer does all day in a factory, though a truck-mounted arm would need protection from rain, road salt and vibration. ABB's Flexley Mover P604 finds its way around a plant with 3D Visual SLAM, and that kind of navigation is what a self-driving cone needs on a much smaller scale.

An ABB IRB 660 palletizer, the kind of pick and place robot that stacks products all day. Photo: ABB

What comes next for cone placement

On highways, the next step is probably a mix: a cone truck with an arm or a conveyor for placing and collecting, and a few self-driving cones or barrier units for emergencies, as in the Chinese pilots. A robot arm on a moving vehicle has to deal with speed changes, uneven road and cones that land on their side, so engineers would want to simulate the motion first. Tools like RobotStudio let them test reach, cycle time and collisions before anything goes near a live lane.

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

Closer to home, the cones that people meet are outside their own houses: utility crews digging up a street, parking bays reserved for a move, a school car park on sports day. A small fleet of self-positioning cones could set out a closure for a crew of two while they unload tools. Similar navigation already guides robot mowers and delivery robots on pavements. Road repair is also getting robotic in other ways, as our post on robotic pothole repair shows.

Cones mark out road works on Pitt Street in Auckland, next to a petrol station. Photo: Ingolfson / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The open questions are mostly about trust. A cone that drives itself has to stop when a car or a child is in the way, keep working in heavy rain and refuse commands from anyone who should not be giving them; the Gadget Review piece points out that cybersecurity and regulatory approval are still unsettled. The test Highways England set in 2020 is a fair benchmark for any of these machines: it had to give workers a safer method, stay safe for every road user and add no new risk to traffic. Cost matters too, because a plastic cone costs very little and a robotic one does not. Road crews will also need training to service and repair the machines.

Engineers with an ABB OmniCore controller and robot cell. Photo: ABB

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