Juice Robot: From Squeezed Oranges to ABB Kiosks

A juice robot takes one order: you press a button, and a machine turns real fruit into a cold glass of juice while you watch. Behind it sit juice bars, citrus squeezers and vending machines. This post follows fresh juice from the hand press to the kiosk, looks at the juice machines being rolled out today, and asks where ABB robots such as the IRB 360 FlexPicker, the IRB 1200 Hygienic and the YuMi could fit. Where ABB has announced nothing, the post says so.

An Ijooz fresh orange juice vending machine at Kyoto Station, Japan, 2025. Photo: Mr.ちゅらさん / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How fresh juice moved from hand presses to machines

For most of history, fresh juice meant squeezing fruit by hand, with a reamer, a screw press or just a fist. Juice bars grew out of that habit, and they now appear in places as different as a station concourse in Singapore, where one sells oranges and apples at Clarke Quay, and a shopping mall in Helsinki. The work is repetitive: cut the fruit, press it, pour, clean the press, wipe the counter, and start again for the next customer. A bar can serve a customer well, but the cost of staff, cutting boards and wet floors adds up quickly.

A cook squeezing oranges by hand into a glass in a commercial kitchen, 2012. Photo: Spc. Nathan Thome / U.S. Army via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Industry automated the squeezing first. ASME's landmark record says the FMC citrus juice extractor made its first experimental run on grapefruit at a Sunkist plant in Tempe, Arizona, in late May 1946, and dates the machine to 1947. It used a rotary design with 24 heads that pull juice and citrus oil at the same time. In April 1946 the Minute Maid company shipped its first frozen orange juice concentrate from Plymouth, Florida, though sources give the exact day as the 15th or the 30th.

Drums of juice stacked in a juice factory at Gan Shmuel, Israel, around 1987. Photo: PikiWiki Israel / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.5)

Squeezing then moved into the shop. Fresh orange vending machines drop whole oranges into a squeezer behind a glass front and fill a cup, and photographs show them in a Kyoto railway station, a Coventry co-operative food store, a supermarket and a botanical garden in Bucharest. Zumex, a Spanish maker based in Moncada near Valencia, dates its Original System juicer to 1985, according to company profiles. These machines do one job well. They are dedicated devices with a squeezer inside, not general purpose robot arms, and that difference matters for where ABB could fit.

An iSqueeze orange juicer in a Co-operative food store in Earlsdon, Coventry. Photo: Gwydion M. Williams / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Juice machines with a robot arm inside

The recent news is in Asia. In September 2025 iBoozee launched what it called Asia's first smart robotic juice machines in Singapore, offering apple, orange or mixed juice. The company said it wanted 500 units across Singapore by the end of 2027, and that machines were already running in Malaysia. In the United States, Jamba launched an automated smoothie station with the robotics company Blendid, the first unit opening inside a Walmart in Dixon, California. Those are blended drinks, which my smoothie kiosk post covers.

A Jamba Juice store in 2021; Blendid later ran robotic kiosks under the Jamba name. Photo: Kzoo Cowboy / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

I found no new robotic juice news from the last 45 days, so the hook here comes from ABB itself. In mid-October 2026 ABB announced an expansion of OmniCore EyeMotion with AI Robot Trainer at CIIF in Shanghai, aimed at changing products, lighting and layouts, with claims of up to 90 percent faster commissioning. Those are ABB's figures. Fruit is a good test for that kind of vision, because oranges vary in size, color and position, and a kiosk robot cannot ask a customer to sort them first.

A presenter shows an AI vision workflow on a screen beside a collaborative robot arm, from ABB's October 2026 OmniCore EyeMotion news. Photo: ABB

ABB has not announced a juice kiosk, so this part is a possibility. The IRB 360 FlexPicker is a fast delta robot that ABB shows picking small items on moving lines. The IRB 1200 Hygienic is a hygienic version of the compact IRB 1200, which ABB shows picking bananas in a food demo. At the Smartech bar in Selfridges in London, ABB's YuMi has made coffee, a drink counter that shows how an arm can work in view of customers. A juice cell would need the same hygiene and the same careful cup handling, and could be tested first in RobotStudio.

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

What comes next for juice kiosks and the plants behind them

For homes, I found no robot juice bar aimed at a kitchen, and the problem is clear. Fresh juice spoils fast, pulp and sugar make cleaning a daily chore, and a household drinks a few glasses a day, not hundreds. The likely first stops are stations, malls, hospitals and offices, where many people pass a machine every hour. A home version would have to clean itself and cost far less than a good juicer plus the time you spend washing it.

A juice bar selling oranges, red apples and other fruits at Clarke Quay MRT station, Singapore, 2018. Photo: Basile Morin / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

On the factory side, juice depends on fruit that arrives in uneven loads. Packhouses and plants sort, wash, move and pack fruit before any squeezing, and robots already help with that handling, as the post on fruit packhouses shows. The open problems are seasonal variation, wet and sticky surfaces and strict food safety rules. A robot that works near open fruit and finished juice needs washdown design and a clear plan for stopping and cleaning without losing a day's output.

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

Cost and skills set the pace. A kiosk operator wants a robot that restarts after a jam without a technician, and a small plant wants tools that a few staff can set up themselves. That is the aim of vision software such as EyeMotion and of approaches like no-code robot control. Until prices fall, juice robots will most likely stay in busy public places, with homes some way behind. ABB's part, if it comes, is more likely in the factories that supply them. The cup, lid and fruit handling around a kiosk are jobs ABB robots already do in other food settings.

Two fresh orange juice vending machines side by side, photographed in 2023. Photo: Mr.ちゅらさん / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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