Windshield Installation Robot History and ABB Arms

A windshield installation robot does three jobs on a car assembly line: it prepares the glass, lays a bead of urethane adhesive around its edge and presses it into the body opening. A modern windshield is glued in as a structural part of the car, so a gap in the bead weakens the body and can let the glass come loose in a crash. This post covers how windshields were fitted before robots, how glue replaced rubber gaskets, what robot cells and inline inspection do today, where ABB robots fit, and what still makes the job hard.

ABB robots working on a car body in final assembly, the stage where windshields go in. Photo: ABB

From plate glass to glued-in windshields

The first windshields were plain window glass, which kept dust and wind off the driver but broke into large, dangerous pieces in a crash. Laminated "Triplex" glass, two sheets with a layer between them, was available for windshields in France from 1911 and in Britain from 1912, and some high end American makers used it from 1913. Henry Ford ordered laminated glass on all his cars between 1919 and 1929. Fitting was hand work, with the pane set into a frame that held it in place.

The small driver's side windscreen of a 1913 Ford Model T Speedster. Photo: Mattes / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

From the 1940s to the 1960s, body makers such as Fisher Body held the windshield in with a rubber gasket. In the early 1960s carmakers started worrying about people being thrown out through the windshield in crashes, and they compared gaskets with glue. Glue was cheaper, and a later NHTSA study found that adhesive bonding cut by half the cases of the windshield coming loose and of a passenger going through it. Today's urethane bond makes the glass part of the body: it braces the passenger airbag and helps the roof keep its shape in a rollover.

The entrance to the old warehouses of the Societe du Verre Triplex in Montlucon, France. Photo: François GOGLINS / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

With glue, the installer has to lay an even bead of urethane on the body flange and set heavy, curved glass on it within millimetres, again and again, which is the kind of repetitive precision robots are good at. In October 1985 Mazda filed a Japanese patent for a line in which a single robot moved between front and rear stations, fitting both windshields as bodies passed on a conveyor. Glassmakers automated too. In 2002 ABB described a compact robot based system that assembles up to five laminated windshields a minute, with two six axis robots trimming the excess plastic.

Finished cars with their windshields fitted on the Paykan production line in Iran, 1982. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

How robots set windshields today

The newest work is in checking the bead while it goes down. On 6 October 2026 Interplas Insights reported that Coherix has a system called 3D GlassMaster Tracker that inspects every urethane bead inline and tracks the part during dispensing, automatically adjusting the robot path in real time to allow for variation in glass shape. Coherix chairman Dwight Carlson said it has cut up to five hours a week of line downtime for several customers. The company says a securely bonded windshield gives up to 60% of a cabin's structural strength.

A cracked laminated windshield on a 1996 Honda Odyssey that held together after a hit at highway speed. Photo: ThefirstM / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

On ABB's side, the company lists windshield and rear window fitting among the final assembly jobs it automates, alongside lamps, door removal and tyre mounting. One difficulty is that the car keeps moving while the glass goes in. ABB's Dynamic Assembly Pack is built for that: it uses cameras and force sensing so a robot can do complex tasks on a moving line safely and precisely. Bead dispensing itself is close to the work covered in our post on robotic gluing and sealing.

A robot tool working inside a car body that has no windshield yet, from ABB's Dynamic Assembly Pack material. Photo: ABB

The robots doing the lifting are large arms that can carry a windshield on a vacuum gripper. ABB says its IRB 7710 and IRB 7720 reach path accuracy down to 0.6 mm at speeds up to 1,600 mm per second, the kind of figure that matters when a bead has to land on a narrow flange. The path itself is usually built and checked first in RobotStudio, then tuned on the line. ABB has not announced a windshield cell with Coherix, so pairing them would be up to the carmaker or integrator.

Engineers plan a cell on screen beside an ABB IRB 7710 or IRB 7720 large robot. Photo: ABB

Where glass bonding robots go next

For factories, the same bonding problem is spreading to batteries. Coherix sells the GlassMaster Tracker for battery cover sealing as well, because a poorly sealed pack lets moisture in and can lead to battery failure or fire. ABB already builds battery modules with robots in its own plant in Baden, where an IRB 4600 places cells and an IRB 6620 laser welds them. Bonding lids and covers on lines like that is a likely next job for the dispensing cells now used on glass.

An ABB IRB 4600 handling battery cells at ABB's energy storage plant in Baden. Photo: ABB

Records are the other trend. Coherix stores a digital record of each bead so carmakers can prove every windshield was bonded as specified, which helps with audits and warranty claims. More lines are likely to keep that kind of data for every car, linking the robot's path, the bead scan and the glass part number. That only pays off if someone uses the data, so plants will need people who can read it and adjust the cell, skills that line workers have rarely needed before.

A pile of damaged windshields at a glass processing plant in Durham, North Carolina, 2009. Photo: Ildar Sagdejev / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

At home, replacing a cracked windshield is still a job for a technician, and some of them work from a van in a car park. A replacement typically takes less than an hour, and quick cure adhesives have made mobile service common, although the urethane cures best at about 21 °C and 50% humidity. Rules on safe drive away time decide when the car can leave. I would not expect a robot in the car park any time soon. On the factory line, the hard parts are the cost of vision and tracking systems and the fact that curved glass never quite matches the drawing, which is exactly the variation Coherix built its tracker to handle.

A mobile windscreen replacement in a supermarket car park in Barnstaple, England, 2024. Photo: Roger A Smith / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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