Test Driving Robot: Proving Grounds to ABB Arms

Before a new car reaches a showroom, it goes through thousands of manoeuvres that must be repeated exactly, with the steering angle, brake pressure and speed matched on every run. A test driving robot does that more consistently than a person, and in the most dangerous tests it keeps people out of harm's way altogether. This post looks at how human test drivers worked on the early proving grounds, how steering and pedal robots took over, how ADAS testing with soft targets works in 2026, and where ABB robots could help, mostly inside the cabin.

Two cars lined up for ADAS testing on the Applus+ IDIADA proving ground in Spain, 2018. Photo: Applus+ IDIADA / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

How human test drivers built the proving grounds

Carmakers started building private test tracks in the 1920s. General Motors opened its Milford Proving Ground in Michigan in 1924, and Packard followed in 1928 with a proving ground designed by the architect Albert Kahn. Salaried test drivers lapped these tracks for hours over cobbles, gravel and high speed bowls, writing notes on how each car handled and what broke. The results depended on each driver's skill and stamina, and no two drivers took a corner exactly the same way. The tracks gave engineers a private place to break cars before customers could.

The gateway buildings of the Packard Proving Grounds in Shelby Township, Michigan, 2011. Photo: Andrew Jameson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Engineers wanted results they could repeat. Tyre testing led to one of the first experiments: in October 1968 Continental put a driverless car on its test track, steered along a guide wire so that every lap of a tyre test was the same and lateral drift was corrected automatically. Crash testing solved its own problem with instrumented dummies, so cars could be wrecked on purpose with nobody inside. Durability testing stayed hard on people, because hours on deliberately broken roads wear out a driver's body.

Crash test dummies at the NHTSA Vehicle Research and Test Center in Ohio, 2008. Photo: NHTSA Transportation Research Center via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Robot drivers grew out of that need. By the mid 1990s, engineers were describing commercial robotic driver systems for chassis durability tracks where the surface was too severe for human drivers. Companies such as AB Dynamics in the UK developed steering robots that fit in place of the steering wheel, along with pedal robots that work the brake and accelerator. Paired with precise GPS and inertial navigation, a robot can follow a planned path to within a few centimetres and repeat it lap after lap. Because the robot sits in place of the wheel and pedals, the same car can still be driven by a person between robot runs.

Millbrook Proving Ground in Bedfordshire, England, seen from the air, 2009. Photo: M J Richardson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

How ADAS testing uses driving robots in 2026

Driver assistance testing is now the main job for these robots. Euro NCAP has scored autonomous emergency braking since 2014, and each of those tests needs a car to approach a target at a fixed speed and angle many times over. Euro NCAP keeps adding to its protocols. In October 2026 it published results under the 2026 rules, which also reward physical buttons for basic controls, and the redesigned Audi Q7 scored 100 percent for essential driving controls.

The Applus+ IDIADA proving ground near Tarragona from the air, with its high speed oval and handling tracks. Photo: Applus+ IDIADA / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 de)

The targets are robots too. The test vehicle drives at a soft target, a foam or inflatable car, cyclist or pedestrian mounted on a low, flat platform that the test car can run over without damage. That lets a team repeat a test many times in a day without writing off a car or putting anyone at risk. The platform follows its own planned path, timed to the robot driver in the test car, so a near miss or a collision happens at the same point on every run. Demand for this equipment is holding up: in September 2026 AB Dynamics said it expected revenue of £91.6 million for its 2026 financial year, with an order book of £31 million.

General Motors' Desert Proving Ground in Arizona seen from an aircraft, 2015. Photo: Marcrez / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB does not make driving robots, and we know of no ABB arm in an ADAS test car, so its role here would be a new one. The likeliest place is the cabin. Euro NCAP's attention to buttons and switches means controls have to be checked for feel and response, and a single-arm YuMi IRB 14050 or a GoFa CRB 15000 can press buttons and touchscreens thousands of times with the same force. A cell like that can also log the force and travel of every press, so engineers get numbers to compare instead of a tester's impression. Robots already do similar work on phones, as our post on smartphone testing describes.

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

What comes next for driving robots and vehicle testing

I expect testing to keep moving between simulation and the track. Self-driving cars such as Waymo's robotaxis, which now run in cities including Miami, go through a great deal of simulated driving before they carry passengers. Physical tests are still needed to check that what worked in simulation also works with real tyres, brakes and sensors, and driving robots are the tool for that. Soft targets will also have to move more like real pedestrians and cyclists.

A Waymo robotaxi on a street in West Miami, April 2026. Photo: Phillip Pessar / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Inside factories, repeatable robot testing is spreading down the line. At Electrolux's refrigerator plant in Curitiba, Brazil, an ABB GoFa cobot connects test equipment to each fridge, a task where doing it the same way every time is the point. End of line checks in car plants could use similar cobots to work switches, doors and screens. Cells like that are usually built and checked first in RobotStudio before anyone bolts them to the floor.

An ABB GoFa CRB 15000 connecting test equipment to a refrigerator. Photo: ABB

Cost and skills are the open problems. A full ADAS test setup, with robot driver, soft target platform and precise positioning, is a big investment for a test centre. Safety needs care as well, since a robot or a target platform can fail in the middle of a high speed run. Test centres also need engineers who can program a manoeuvre, read the data and tell whether a strange result came from the car or from the robot driving it.

ABB's Dynamic Assembly Pack uses cameras and force sensing in final car assembly. Photo: ABB

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