BBQ Grill Robot: From Turnspit Dogs to ABB Arms

Grilling looks like the last job anyone would hand to a machine. It is smoky and hot, and most of it runs on feel: when to turn the meat, how close it sits to the coals, when the grate needs a scrape. Kitchens have still tried to automate pieces of it for centuries, and a BBQ grill robot is now a real product category, from small brush bots that scrub grates to robot arms flipping patties in restaurants. This post follows the spit from kitchen boys and dog wheels to clockwork jacks. Then it looks at today's grill machines, a skewering robot launched in the UAE in September 2026, where ABB robots could fit, and what still stands in the way.

Satay skewers grilling over open flames in Tanjung Aru, Malaysia. Photo: Dcubillas / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

From spit boys and turnspit dogs to clockwork jacks

For most of history, roasting meat meant turning it. In medieval and early modern kitchens the spit was the usual way to cook large joints. A servant, often a boy, sat by the fire and turned the iron rod slowly so the meat cooked evenly in its own juices, and he was called the spit boy or spit jack. The French word rotisserie first shows up in Paris shops around 1450. A joint left still would burn on one side and stay raw on the other, so someone had to keep turning for hours in the heat, which made it one of the first kitchen jobs people tried to pass to something else.

A long kitchen spit on iron stands with its belt drive wheel, in the kitchen of the Chateau de Beaumesnil in Normandy. Photo: Stanzilla / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

In Britain, from the Tudor period, that something else was often a dog. Short-legged turnspit dogs ran inside a wooden wheel linked to the spit by belts and pulleys. The book Of English Dogs mentioned them in 1576, and a preserved one is on display at the Abergavenny Museum in Wales. The Ottoman engineer Taqi al-Din had already described a steam-driven roasting jack in 1551. Smoke jacks used a fan in the chimney, turned by hot air rising from the fire. Most jacks before the 19th century, though, were clock jacks, driven by a slowly falling stone or iron weight through a train of gears.

A weight-driven clockwork mechanism for turning a roasting spit, preserved in a historic kitchen in Beaune, France. Photo: Jebulon / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Electric motors eventually took over the spit, and the backyard grill brought its own chore: scrubbing burnt grease off the grate with a wire brush. That job got the first true grill robot. Grillbot launched on January 13, 2014. It is a round, battery-powered unit with three electric motors that drive replaceable brushes across the grate, while a small processor changes their speed and direction. You set a timer, press a button, and it beeps when it is done. It cooks nothing, but it showed that buyers would pay for a gadget that takes over the dirtiest part of grilling.

A red Grillbot grill cleaning robot on a kettle grill, on display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. Photo: Renardo la vulpo / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Robot arms at the grill and the skewer line today

Cooking came next, in restaurants. In March 2018 a robot called Flippy, built by Miso Robotics, began working the grill at a CaliBurger in Pasadena, California. It combined 3D, thermal and regular cameras to spot raw patties and track each one as it cooked, then flipped them and pulled them off when done. A human coworker still had to put the patties down, add cheese and finish the sandwich. Other makers built enclosed grill machines instead. Aniai's Alpha Grill, used by The Filling Station burger restaurants in the New York area, cooks several items at once, unloads them with a built-in spatula and cleans itself between batches.

An ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker stacking burger toppings at BurgerBots in Los Gatos, California. Photo: ABB

A lot of grilling starts before the fire, with someone threading meat onto skewers. On September 17, 2026, Khaleej Times reported that MLS UAE, a butchery business with roots in Oman, had introduced what it calls the region's first Robot Skewer for mishkak, the grilled beef, lamb and chicken skewers popular across the Gulf. The machine standardises portioning and preparation, work that has always depended on manual skill. Director Nadeem Ahmed said technology "should enhance the expertise and standards that have defined our business, not replace them." MLS sells fresh meat online in the UAE and Oman and treats the machine as support for its butchers.

A cook turns seekh kebab skewers on a gas grill at Salim's, Turnpike Lane, London. Photo: Acabashi / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB does not make a grill robot, but its arms already work in restaurants. At BurgerBots in Los Gatos, California, an IRB 360 FlexPicker and a two-armed YuMi cobot assemble burgers in front of customers, as our post on fast food kitchen automation describes. Turning skewers, moving patties or scraping a griddle with a tool are jobs an ABB arm could plausibly take on. The IRB 1200 Hygienic is built to be wiped and washed down in food plants, and GoFa is designed to work next to people. We know of no ABB grilling project, so treat these as possible fits.

An ABB YuMi cobot finishing a burger at BurgerBots in Los Gatos, California. Photo: ABB

What comes next for grill robots at home and in kitchens

At home, the next few years will probably bring more help with cleaning and watching the grill than with cooking. Grate-scrubbing bots, app-linked thermometers and pellet grills that hold a set temperature already take a lot of guesswork out of a cookout. A robot arm standing at a backyard grill is a harder sell. It would have to cope with open flame, flare-ups, grease and weather while sharing the patio with children and pets. A cobot such as GoFa, which senses contact and stops, shows the kind of safety a home grill helper would need, but an arm still costs far more than the grill.

Vegetable and sausage skewers on a backyard gas grill, turned with a spatula. Photo: Personal Creations / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Factories and central kitchens are the likelier place for grilling robots. Skewering, portioning and loading conveyor grills are repeatable jobs done thousands of times a day, which suits industrial robots well. A line like that could pair an IRB 1200 Hygienic for handling raw meat with an IRB 360 FlexPicker for fast picking from a belt, both run from an OmniCore controller. Engineers would usually lay out and test such a cell first in RobotStudio, checking reach, cycle time and the safe distance from heat before any hardware is bought.

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

Several problems remain open. A grill robot has to judge doneness, which still takes a cook's eye, and food safety rules mean every surface that touches raw meat must be cleaned properly. Heat, smoke and grease are hard on sensors, cables and grippers. Cost matters as well, because small restaurants count every dollar and home buyers compare any gadget with a pair of tongs. The turnspit dog won its place by being cheap. The path already visible today is robots taking the repetitive tasks such as skewering, flipping and scrubbing, while people still decide when the meat is ready.

Lamb and suckling pig turning on spits over a wood fire in Novalja, Croatia. Photo: Silverije / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Innovation

AI solutions for effortless ABB robot control.

Automation

Robotics

ceojohntran@chatwithrobot.net

+84905311611

© 2025. All rights reserved.

qtran1215@gmail.com