Fried Chicken Robot: From Sanders' Fryer to ABB

Frying chicken means hours next to hot oil doing the same lift and shake over and over, so it is no surprise that the fried chicken robot has left the trade show floor for real kitchens in South Korea and the United States. This post follows the job from cooks watching a pan of oil, through Colonel Sanders and the pressure fryer, to the robot arms that now lift fry baskets in Korean chicken chains and school canteens. Then it looks at where ABB robots could fit and at the cost and safety questions that still hold the idea back.

A basket of Korean fried chicken. Photo: Startandstar / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

How fried chicken went from skillet to pressure fryer

For most of its history fried chicken was cooked one batch at a time by someone standing over a skillet or a kettle of fat. The cook judged the oil by eye, turned each piece by hand and decided when it was done. Korea has its own long record of the dish: the Sanga Yorok, a cookbook from the 1450s, already describes frying chicken. Modern Korean fried chicken came later, once cooking oil became cheap in the 1970s. In 1977 Lims Chicken opened in the basement of the Shinsegae department store in Seoul as the country's first franchise of its kind.

Chicken wings frying in a pan of bubbling corn oil, the way the job is still done by hand. Photo: Takeaway / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

In the United States the big change came from a roadside cafe. In 1930 Harland Sanders began serving chicken at a service station in North Corbin, Kentucky. Pan frying was slow, so he turned to pressure cooking, and in July 1940 he settled on the recipe he cooked under pressure, which was faster than the skillet. Pete Harman of South Salt Lake, Utah, became the first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchisee in 1952. Sanders patented his pressure frying method in 1962 and sold the company two years later for $2 million.

The Sanders Cafe on US 31E in Corbin, Kentucky, where Harland Sanders served his first chicken. Photo: Brent and MariLynn / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

With pressure frying, much of what a cook used to judge by feel became a setting on a machine. Equipment makers built fryers for the chains: Henny Penny, founded by Chester Wagner in Eaton, Ohio, in 1957, still sells commercial pressure fryers. In Korea, Yun Jonggye created the sweet and spicy yangnyeom glaze at his Daegu shop in 1982, and after the financial crisis of the late 1990s many laid off workers opened chicken shops of their own. Korea now has about 40,000 of them. Fryers gained timers and automatic oil top up, but a person still dropped, shook and lifted every basket.

Pressure fried chicken from a KFC restaurant in Kolkata, 2013. Photo: Biswarup Ganguly / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

Robot fry stations in Korean chains and school kitchens

Korea is where the robot fry station first became a decision for a whole chain. In October 2023 Doosan Robotics signed an agreement to supply frying robots to Kyochon, starting at the brand's headquarters in Osan. The cobot follows Kyochon's method of a first fry, removal of excess batter and a second fry, and it can run six baskets at once for up to 24 chickens an hour. Robert Chicken, run by the startup Roboarte, built its stores around a robot arm, and the convenience chain GS25 partnered with Roboarte in 2022.

A Kyochon fried chicken order at a table in Seoul, 2024. Photo: Sgroey / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The newest figures come from school canteens. On 6 October 2026 The Korea Times reported that Gangnam District in southern Seoul has upgraded the cooking robots it installed with Korea Robotics at three schools in August 2023. In June the district added a system that drains hot oil automatically after frying, so staff no longer wait for it to cool and scoop it out by hand. Over the past year the robots worked on 439 of 548 lunch days. Earlier tests showed staff exposure to oil fumes and fine dust fell by 28.6 percent, and students have asked for robot made fried chicken next.

Pickup lockers at Market 19, the US Army's first autonomous kitchen, at Camp Walker in South Korea, where a robot arm prepares the meals, 2025. Photo: Kailil Kendrick, U.S. Army via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

In the United States, Miso Robotics said in a September 2026 release that its Flippy fry station robot will now be sold through The Ferri Group, an equipment agent in the New York area, next to ordinary kitchen gear. We know of no ABB robot frying chicken today, but ABB arms already work in food service: YuMi and IRB 360 FlexPicker robots assemble burgers at BurgerBots. A GoFa CRB 15000 cobot, which carries 5 kg and stops when it senses contact, could in principle lift fry baskets beside staff, though nobody has announced such a project. Our post on fast food kitchen automation covers the wider kitchen.

An ABB GoFa CRB 15000 cobot at a work table, the kind of arm that can share a kitchen with people. Photo: ABB

What a robot fryer still has to solve

The next step is a fryer and a robot designed as one unit. The Gangnam oil drain and Doosan's easy oil change point the same way, because cleaning, filtering and changing hot oil are harder to automate than moving baskets. Plants that make frozen and breaded chicken lean toward fixed lines, with delta robots such as the FlexPicker sorting and packing pieces. Cells like these are usually laid out and tested first in RobotStudio, and SafeMove zones keep people and arms apart once the line runs.

A soldier picks up a meal from the Market 19 autonomous kitchen at Camp Walker, November 2025. Photo: ROKA Sgt. Lee, U.S. Army 19th ESC via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Home kitchens are further off. Countertop air fryers already do the cooking in many homes, and a robot arm next to a pot of 170 degree oil in a family kitchen raises safety questions that no maker has answered yet. Restaurants look more likely, especially in Korea, where chicken shops are small, staff are hard to find and the work is hot. Kiosks such as the US Army's Market 19 autonomous kitchen at Camp Walker in Daegu show how a sealed robot kitchen can hand out meals with nobody behind the counter.

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

Cost and skills remain the open questions. A robot fry station has to pay for itself against wages in a small shop, and someone still has to bread the chicken, clean the hood and restart the robot when it stops. The Gangnam program suggests a workable path. Its robots take the hottest and heaviest tasks while the cooks keep control of the food, and each upgrade so far, from the simpler touch screen in March to the oil drain in June, came from requests by the people working in those kitchens.

An ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker over the burger line at BurgerBots, where delta robots add toppings to moving trays. Photo: ABB

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