The Assistive Feeding Robot: From Handy 1 to ABB GoFa

How the assistive feeding robot grew from Handy 1 and Obi to AI lab arms, and what ABB GoFa safety features could mean for feeding help at home.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

10/1/20266 min read

Eating is one of the first daily tasks people lose after a high spinal cord injury, a stroke, ALS or severe cerebral palsy, and it is one of the hardest to hand over. Every meal then depends on another person's time and patience. An assistive feeding robot tries to give back part of that control: a small arm loads a spoon and brings it to the mouth when the user asks for the next bite. This post traces the idea from carers feeding by hand to the first feeding robots, looks at the lab arms and care devices shown in 2026, and asks what ABB's cobot safety work could add as these machines move into homes.

A young woman in uniform holds a spoon to the mouth of an elderly man in a wheelchair
A young woman in uniform holds a spoon to the mouth of an elderly man in a wheelchair

A US Navy sailor feeds a resident at St. Dominic's Senior Care Center in Guam, 2015. Photo: Patrick Dionne / U.S. Navy via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

From the carer's spoon to Handy 1

For most of history, a person who could not lift a spoon was fed by family, a nurse or an aide. Wartime hospital photographs show nurses spooning food to men in bed, and the job has hardly changed since. It is slow, careful work. The carer waits for chewing to finish, sets the angle of the spoon, wipes the mouth and watches for coughing or choking. In a care home one aide may help several residents in the same mealtime, so the pace of a meal is often set by the staff rota. The person eating rarely gets to choose which food comes next or when.

A nurse in a paper hat spoons food to a patient sitting up in a hospital bed with a tray
A nurse in a paper hat spoons food to a patient sitting up in a hospital bed with a tray

A nurse feeds a patient a spoonful of Christmas pudding at a naval hospital in Kingseat, Scotland, December 1941. Photo: Lt L Pelman / Royal Navy via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The first robot built for this job came from England. In 1987 Mike Topping built Handy 1 so that an 11 year old boy with cerebral palsy could eat without help. It was a small robot arm next to a plate divided into sections. A row of lights scanned along the sections, and the user pressed a single switch to pick a section and call the spoon. Later versions added modules for drinking, washing, teeth cleaning, shaving and make up. Its developers later described Handy 1 as the most successful low cost robot of its kind on the market, used by people with many different disabilities.

A group of student nurses gathered round a bed while a sister demonstrates feeding a patient
A group of student nurses gathered round a bed while a sister demonstrates feeding a patient

Student nurses at St Helier Hospital, Surrey, watch a sister show how to feed a patient who cannot swallow, 1943. Photo: Richard Stone / Ministry of Information via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Japan and the United States followed with table top feeders. The Japanese security company Secom announced My Spoon in 2001, a meal robot that picks food from a tray with a spoon and fork gripper and is steered with a joystick or switches. It won a prize in the service robot category of Japan's Robot Award in 2006. In Florida, Jon Dekar's company DESIN launched Obi in 2016 after years of prototypes. Obi sits beside a plate with four bowls, and a carer teaches it where the user's mouth is by moving the arm by hand. Users then choose a bowl and take bites with two large buttons.

A nurse at a table helping a toddler eat from a tray while another child eats beside them
A nurse at a table helping a toddler eat from a tray while another child eats beside them

A ward nurse at Long Binh, Vietnam, helps two small children feed themselves. Photo: SSgt Howard C Breedlove / US National Archives via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Feeding arms in labs and at care fairs today

Most of the hard problems are being worked on in university labs. Cornell's EmPRISE Lab, led by Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee, presented FLAIR at Robotics: Science and Systems in 2024, a system that can feed a complete meal. It uses a camera, a lightweight robot arm and models that decide which bite to take next and which tool motion fits it, such as skewering, scooping or twirling noodles. Earlier devices struggled most with picking up a slippery grape or a spoonful of rice without spilling it, and then with meeting a head that moves.

A white two armed robot on a mobile base standing in a bright hospital corridor
A white two armed robot on a mobile base standing in a bright hospital corridor

ABB's mobile YuMi concept, a dual arm robot on a wheeled base, in a hospital lab corridor. Photo: ABB

Feeding robots are also leaving the lab. On 16 September 2026, at a care robot demonstration at the Kim Koo Museum and Library in Seoul, NT Robot showed a portable, modular feeding assistant for people with limited mobility, next to bathing chairs and transfer robots. The National Rehabilitation Center said it plans to expand field tests of these devices. On 29 September, Hello Robot announced a National Institutes of Health Phase IIB grant of nearly $3 million, with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, to study its Stretch robot with older adults who have mild cognitive impairment. That project covers reminders, social contact and safety rather than meals, but it shows public money going into home robots.

A grey and white ABB cobot arm working at a lab bench with instruments
A grey and white ABB cobot arm working at a lab bench with instruments

A GoFa cobot at ABB's healthcare research hub. Photo: ABB

ABB does not sell a feeding robot, and its arms are industrial machines without medical approval. The safety ideas behind its GoFa CRB 15000 cobot are still close to what a feeding arm needs. GoFa has torque sensors in all six joints and stops when it senses contact with a person. Its basic version carries 5 kg with a 950 mm reach, and its top tool speed of 2.2 m/s can be limited much further in zones close to people. A GoFa on a table with a spoon tool, taught by hand guiding and set up with Wizard easy programming, is a plausible research platform for a feeding study. It is a possibility, and no ABB feeding project has been announced.

A woman holding a handheld robot controller with a GoFa cobot arm behind her
A woman holding a handheld robot controller with a GoFa cobot arm behind her

Programming a GoFa cobot from the FlexPendant touch screen. Photo: ABB

What has to change before feeding robots are common at home

At home the first barrier is cost. Dedicated feeders and assistive arms are sold in small numbers, and whether insurance or a care budget pays for one is decided case by case. A cheaper route may be a general home robot that also feeds, which is why mobile manipulators like Stretch matter here. The second barrier is set up. A carer has to place the plate, teach the mouth position, clean the spoon and trust the machine enough to leave the room. Devices that need an engineer to adjust them will stay in research projects.

A woman holding the end of a long white cobot arm and guiding it by hand
A woman holding the end of a long white cobot arm and guiding it by hand

Moving a GoFa arm by hand, the way a position is taught without writing code. Photo: ABB

Safety near the face is still an open problem. Industrial cobot rules, written down in ISO/TS 15066, treat the face as a body region where contact should be avoided, yet a feeding robot has to bring a metal spoon to the lips many times per meal. Researchers handle this with low speeds near the mouth, force sensing in the wrist, and a spoon that stops a short distance from the lips so the user leans in to take the bite. Personal care robots fall under ISO 13482, a separate standard from the factory ones, and a feeding arm that goes on sale has to pass medical device rules as well.

A woman guiding the tool of a GoFa cobot arm over a wooden work table
A woman guiding the tool of a GoFa cobot arm over a wooden work table

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

Factories benefit from the same work. The sensing that lets a feeding arm pick up soft food without crushing it is also what food plants need for handling cakes, fruit and ready meals, and the speed limits close to a face resemble those used when a cobot shares a bench with a worker. For students, the skills overlap too. A feeding program is a pick, a carry and a slow approach to a moving target, the kind of task usually built and checked first in RobotStudio before anyone sits in front of the arm.

A man in a suit standing between white ABB cobot arms on display plinths
A man in a suit standing between white ABB cobot arms on display plinths

ABB's GoFa and SWIFTI cobots at their launch in February 2021. Photo: ABB

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