Baby Formula Robot: From Feeding Bottles to ABB

Every parent who has mixed a bottle at 3 a.m. has wondered why a machine cannot do it. A baby formula robot would measure the powder, heat the water, mix the bottle and clean up. Machines that do the first three steps already sit on kitchen counters, and this autumn they have been in the news for the wrong reasons. This post covers how babies were fed before formula machines existed, what the recent lawsuit and health report say about today's formula makers, and where ABB robots fit, from the factory floor to a possible future kitchen.

A baby drinks from a feeding bottle in a 1922 photograph. Photo: Wellcome Collection via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

How feeding bottles and formula grew up together

Feeding babies from a vessel is very old, older than glass or plastic. A bottle-shaped ceramic vessel from Regensburg, Germany, dates to somewhere between 1350 and 800 BCE, and residue analysis shows that ceramic baby bottles were used to feed animal milk as early as 1200 BCE. Romans blew glass feeding bottles around 250 to 300 BCE, though they never became popular. For centuries after that, babies were fed from pewter, tin and silver pots and similar vessels called bubby-pots and sucking-pots.

A ceramic infant feeding bottle from Castledyke Cemetery in a museum case. Photo: Lajmmoore / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The modern bottle took shape in the 1840s. In 1841 C.M. Windship patented the first glass nursing bottle in the United States, and in 1845 Elijah Pratt of New York patented the first rubber nipple. The next problem was germs. Wilmot Castle and Company began making modified Arnold steam sterilizers for baby bottles in 1893, and a home pasteurizer, the Castle Home Pasteurizer, became available in 1914. Mixing and sterilizing a day's feeds was a daily kitchen chore.

A steam sterilizer with a rack of feeding bottles, from an 1889 medical book. Photo: Internet Archive Book Images via Wikimedia Commons (no known restrictions)

Formula followed. Justus von Liebig is credited with the first commercial infant formula, Liebig's Soluble Food for Babies, in 1867, and rivals such as Mellin's Food soon appeared. Mead Johnson released Dextri-Maltose in 1912, and Enfamil came in 1959. By the early 1970s more than 75 percent of American babies were fed formula. Institutions filled rows of bottles by hand, as in a photograph from the Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming, where women in masks pour milk into glass bottles. Parents at home did the same job one bottle at a time, with a scoop, a kettle and a clean pan.

Two women in masks fill rows of glass bottles at the Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming. Photo: National Archives via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Formula makers and robots on the line today

Countertop formula makers now do that work for parents. You add powder and water, press a button, and the machine mixes a bottle. This autumn two stories put them under scrutiny. A proposed class action filed in early September 2026 against Baby Brezza accuses its formula makers of dispensing too little powder, so babies get diluted feeds. The allegations are unproven, no class has been certified, and no court has found the company liable. The Independent also tested Tommee Tippee and Baby Brezza machines against each other on 21 September.

A purified hot water server for mixing milk formula, in a museum in Kochi, Japan. Photo: Tzuhsun Hsu / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Safety is the second issue. In June 2026 the CDC reported the case of a 10-month-old girl admitted to Georgetown University Hospital in November 2025 with Legionnaires disease. Investigators found Legionella in her household water and in higher amounts in a Baby Brezza Formula Pro Advanced device, whose reservoir held water at 41 degrees Celsius and had not been fully drained in over 30 days. The CDC advises mixing powder with water heated to at least 70 degrees and cooling it, and suggests manufacturers revise device instructions and designs.

A scoop of baby formula powder, the amount a formula maker has to dose. Photo: ajay_suresh / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Industrial robots work at the other end of the chain. ABB has not announced a home formula machine, so what follows is a possibility. In dairy plants ABB robots already handle milk products: ABB palletizing robots stack cartons on the UHT milk lines at Piracanjuba's plant in Goiás, Brazil. A formula packing line could use an IRB 360 FlexPicker to place sachets or scoops into packs, and an IRB 1200 Hygienic, which has been shown picking bananas in a food handling demo, near open food. Such lines are usually designed first in RobotStudio, and for a related dairy story see ABB robots in dairy.

ABB palletizing robots on the UHT milk lines at Piracanjuba's plant in Goias, Brazil. Photo: ABB

What a robot that makes your baby's bottle must prove

A home robot that prepares formula would face the same problems as today's machines, plus a few more. Dosing has to be accurate every time, because a few scoops too few or too many can matter to an infant. The water must be hot enough to be safe and then cooled, and the machine must wash and dry its own parts so germs do not grow in a warm reservoir. Each of these needs checks the machine can run itself, such as weighing the powder and logging the water temperature, so a parent does not have to guess.

ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker delta robots picking items on a moving line. Photo: ABB

An arm adds new risks. A robot that picks up a bottle, adds water and hands the bottle over would work close to a parent and a baby. Cobots like the ABB GoFa and YuMi are built to stop on contact, and ABB's SafeMove software monitors speed and position, which are the building blocks of safe home use. A kitchen robot would still need its own testing and approvals, and small mistakes can hurt more when the person fed is an infant. The same questions appear in assistive feeding robots.

An ABB IRB 1200 Hygienic robot picking bananas in a food handling demo. Photo: ABB

For factories the next years look more practical. Formula makers will keep packing powder at high speed, with FlexPickers and palletizers moving cartons, and operators watching hygiene closely. For homes, price and trust come first. Trust is hard to win back after a lawsuit and a health report. Skills matter as well, since parents must clean and descale it correctly. A formula robot is likely to arrive as a feature of a general kitchen helper, and only after safe, well-tested bottle-making machines earn that trust.

An ABB YuMi assembling small parts beside a lab worker. Photo: ABB

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