ABB Robots and Dishwashing: Scullery to Kitchen Cobot

Dishwashing went from hand-scrubbed sculleries to tunnel machines to robots that load them. Where ABB's IRB 1200 Hygienic, IRB 360 and GoFa fit in.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/20/20262 min read

Washing up was the first job in any kitchen and the job nobody wanted. The numbers got ugly at scale: the scullery crew aboard the USS Midway cleaned more than 10,000 trays a day. Conveyor tunnel machines showed up mid-century and took over the washing itself.

A Victorian scullery with plates stacked on a wooden dresser, where dishes were washed by hand
A Victorian scullery with plates stacked on a wooden dresser, where dishes were washed by hand

A Victorian scullery and china dresser at the Charles Dickens Museum, London. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA)

Somebody still had to scrape the plates, sort the cutlery, rack the glassware and stack it all once it came out clean. That end of the job stayed manual for decades. A dish pit is a heap of wet, greasy, randomly angled objects, which is close to the worst case there is for a robot gripper.

The stainless steel scullery compartment aboard the aircraft carrier USS Midway
The stainless steel scullery compartment aboard the aircraft carrier USS Midway

The scullery aboard the USS Midway, where the crew cleaned over 10,000 trays a day. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

That is what has started to shift. Armstrong Robotics raised $12 million and now runs dish robots around the clock at a large US restaurant chain, loading standard commercial machines and washing over a million dishes a year. Nala Robotics rents its Spotless unit at $2,995 a month.

A stainless steel conveyor tunnel dishwasher with a rack of plates in a commercial kitchen
A stainless steel conveyor tunnel dishwasher with a rack of plates in a commercial kitchen

A conveyor tunnel dishwasher in a commercial kitchen. Photo: negintabkh / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB doesn't sell a dishwashing robot, though it does sell most of the parts you would build one from. The IRB 1200 Hygienic was made for wet food work: an IP67 body, IP69K on the axis-6 flange, NSF H1 food-grade grease, FDA-compliant coatings, and a washdown cover so the cell can be hosed out.

An orange ABB IRB industrial robot arm working on a steel part held by a positioner
An orange ABB IRB industrial robot arm working on a steel part held by a positioner

An ABB IRB arm paired with a positioner. The IRB 1200 Hygienic uses the same arm layout in a washdown build. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Next to it you could put a stainless IRB 360 FlexPicker, which sorts cutlery and small ware at speed, and a GoFa CRB 15000, a cobot rated to work beside a person at the soiled-dish table with no fence around it. An OmniCore controller runs both, programmed offline in RobotStudio.

Close-up of an ABB robot wrist fitted with a pneumatic gripper
Close-up of an ABB robot wrist fitted with a pneumatic gripper

The wrist and gripper of an ABB robot. Photo: Peter Potrowl / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.5)

Loading a dishwasher has turned into the standard demo for home robots. 1X's NEO, at $20,000, and SwitchBot's Onero H1 from CES 2026 both do it, mostly with a person watching. The machines that assemble robots like those run on industrial arms, and ABB builds a lot of them.

A row of ASEA and ABB industrial robots on display, including the 1974 IRB 6
A row of ASEA and ABB industrial robots on display, including the 1974 IRB 6

ASEA and ABB robots on display, including the 1974 IRB 6. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Innovation

AI solutions for effortless ABB robot control.

Automation

Robotics

ceojohntran@chatwithrobot.net

+84905311611

© 2025. All rights reserved.

qtran1215@gmail.com

Instagram