Bubble Tea Robot: From Taiwan Tea Shops to ABB Arms

A cup of bubble tea looks simple: tea, milk, sugar, ice and a layer of chewy tapioca pearls. Making hundreds of them an hour, each with its own sugar and ice level, is repetitive work, which is why the bubble tea robot keeps coming back. This post goes from the Taiwanese tea houses that created the drink in the 1980s to cup sealers and shaker machines, then to the robot kiosks opening now, including a new robot bar in Avignon, France. It ends with where ABB robots could fit, in shops and in the factories that make pearls and cups.

A glass of pearl milk tea served at Chun Shui Tang in Taiwan. Photo: Battlesnake1 / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

How Taiwan tea houses invented the drink by hand

The drink grew out of Taiwan's cold tea culture. Liu Han-chieh, founder of Chun Shui Tang in Taichung, began serving Chinese tea cold in the 1980s after seeing coffee served cold in Japan. Shops of the time shook tea with syrup and ice by hand in a cocktail shaker until it foamed, a drink sold as foam tea. According to Chun Shui Tang, its product development manager Lin Hsiu Hui dropped tapioca balls into her tea during a staff meeting in 1988. The new drink became the chain's top seller.

The first Chun Shui Tang tea house in Taichung, Taiwan, 2012. Photo: ayustety / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Hanlin Tea Room in Tainan says its owner Tu Tsong-he invented the drink in 1986, inspired by white tapioca balls he saw at a local market. The two shops took each other to court from 2009, and in 2019 a Taiwanese court ruled that bubble tea could not be patented because anyone can make it. By then the drink had long since left Taiwan. It spread across East and Southeast Asia in the 1990s and reached the United States with Taiwanese immigrants in the same decade.

A Hanlin Tea Room shop in Taiwan, the Tainan tea house that also claims to have invented bubble tea, 2024. Photo: 阿道 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Machines arrived at the counter one at a time. Most Taiwanese shops seal each cup with a machine that heat-seals a plastic film over the top, so the drink can be shaken without spilling. Shaker machines replaced the hand shake and let one worker make several drinks at once, and tea warmers keep brewed tea hot for hours. In 2021 The Counter wrote about the Bubble Tea Shaker Robot from Taiwan Intelligent Robotics, said to need one person where a shop needed four to six. It also reported that shops in Taiwan that tried similar technology had opened and quickly closed.

Behind the counter of a CoCo Fresh Tea & Juice shop, with cup sealing machines and tea urns, 2026. Photo: P1898 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

The bubble tea robot today: kiosks and robot bars

The latest example opened in southern France. On 19 September 2026 Leemi Robot opened at 26 Rue de la République in Avignon, and Riviera Radio called it France's first AI-powered robot bar. Three automated machines make coffee drinks, bubble tea and ice cream. Customers order and pay on a screen, then robot arms prepare and hand over the drink. Prices run from €3 to €6. The owner, Avignon restaurateur Xiaoyong Xu, found similar machines on trips to China and invested nearly €100,000.

A robot arm serving ice cream inside a glass kiosk in Tyumen, Russia, 2023, similar to the ice cream unit in robot drink bars. Photo: RG72 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Technicians in China can control the machines remotely, and one staff member stays on site to help customers, watch the machines and step in when needed. A crêpe machine is due to join the three robots this winter. In Richmond, British Columbia, Tea Industries opened in March 2024 as the province's first robot bubble tea shop, and Daily Hive later reported that it had quietly closed. Back in 2022, robot developer Bobacino signed a deal with San Francisco chain Boba Guys to advise on its robotic boba pod.

Cooking tapioca pearls in a large pot during a school cooking class in Taiwan, 2013. Photo: 褒忠國中 雲端網 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

ABB does not sell a bubble tea robot, and we found no ABB bubble tea project. Its robots have made other drinks, though. In 2018 ABB's dual arm YuMi made coffee at the Smartech store in Selfridges, London, and a YuMi cobot finishes burgers at BurgerBots in Los Gatos, California. YuMi is built to work close to people, with small payloads and two arms that can hold a cup while the other hand works, which suits sealing, shaking and serving. Using it for bubble tea would be a possibility, much like the drink cells in our post on the robot bartender.

ABB's YuMi making coffee at the Smartech store in Selfridges, London, 2018. Photo: ABB

Where bubble tea robots go next, in shops and plants

Chains want the same drink in every branch even when staff change often, and a programmed machine repeats a recipe exactly. The likely path is small automated corners inside normal shops and kiosks in places with long opening hours, such as stations, airports and campuses. Fully staffless stores look less likely, since even Avignon keeps a person on site. For homes, a full robot arm is too large and costly, so home bubble tea will probably stay with kettles, shakers and ready made pearls for some time. The arm based kiosks in our post on robotic smoothie kiosks face the same choices.

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

The factories behind the counter are an easier fit for ABB. Tapioca pearls, syrups, sealing film and plastic cups are made and packed on production lines, and those lines need picking, packing and palletizing. An IRB 360 FlexPicker can pick light items from a moving conveyor at high speed, and IRB 460 or IRB 660 palletizers stack finished cartons. Using them for bubble tea supplies is a possibility that follows from what they already do in food plants. Such lines are usually planned and tested first in RobotStudio before any hardware is bought.

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

Pearls are the hardest part. They must be cooked, kept soft and served within hours, and a robot that cannot handle them still leaves that job to a person. Milk and sugar make every surface sticky, so cleaning takes daily work. Customers ask for half sugar, less ice and extra toppings, and each option is one more step to program and test. The Avignon bar cost nearly €100,000, which is a lot of cups at €3 to €6. Shops also need staff who can refill, clean and restart the machines.

Taiwan Boba Station, a bubble tea shop in Sundsvall, Sweden, 2024. Photo: Listz3 / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

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