Hotpot Robot: Charcoal Pots to ABB Robot Kitchens

Hotpot looks like a meal that needs no kitchen, since diners cook their own meat and vegetables in a simmering pot at the table. A busy hotpot restaurant still runs a large logistics job behind the scenes: hundreds of small plates of sliced meat, tofu, noodles and greens have to leave cold storage and reach the right table fast, and a hotpot robot is built for exactly that job. This post follows hotpot service from charcoal pots to conveyor belts, then looks at Haidilao's robot kitchen in Beijing, the newest foodservice robots and the places where ABB arms could fit.

A family hotpot dinner in Chongqing with a split pot of spicy and mild broth. Photo: Jason M. C., Han / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How hotpot went from charcoal pots to restaurant chains

Hotpot has a long history. Bronze vessels of the Zhou dynasty may be its earliest ancestors, and a copper hot pot from the Three Kingdoms period, between 200 and 280 AD, is usually counted as its origin. The Qing court loved it. The Qianlong Emperor ate hotpot at almost every meal, and the Jiaqing Emperor is said to have served 1,550 hot pots at his coronation banquet. For centuries the pot sat over burning charcoal, and every plate of raw food was cut and carried to the table by hand.

Traditional charcoal hot pots with central chimneys stacked on shelves in Shanghai. Photo: Ermell / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Chain restaurants changed the scale. Haidilao, now China's biggest hotpot chain, was founded in Sichuan province in 1994 by Zhang Yong, a former tractor factory worker. By late 2018 China Daily counted 362 Haidilao outlets in China, plus restaurants in Singapore, Japan, South Korea and the United States. Electric and induction burners took the place of charcoal at many tables, so each diner or group could have a separate pot. Service turned even more into moving plates, sauces and refills, the part of the work machines could take over.

The entrance of a Haidilao hotpot restaurant in Suzhou, 2018. Photo: Shwangtianyuan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

In this kind of dining, automation started with the conveyor belt. Yoshiaki Shiraishi opened the first conveyor belt sushi restaurant in Osaka in 1958, and the idea later spread to hotpot. In conveyor hotpot restaurants each seat has its own small pot, and plates of raw ingredients pass by on a belt so diners can take what they want. Later kaitenzushi chains added express lanes that carry tablet orders straight to the seat. All of these systems moved food around the room, while people still filled every plate in the kitchen.

Diners around the conveyor belt at a Yo! Sushi restaurant in Bluewater, England, in 2007. Photo: Clem Rutter / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The hotpot robot moves into the kitchen

Beijing saw the next step in late 2018, when Haidilao opened its first smart hotpot restaurant there. It was built with Panasonic through a joint company formed in March 2018. China Daily reported that the kitchen had two rows of robotic arms collecting pre-packaged dishes from cold storage, and that in ideal conditions the whole process from order to delivery took two minutes. Diners ordered on tablets, and trays reached the tables with help from automated carts and human waiters. Staff still worked the room during the busiest hours.

A screen at a Haidilao restaurant in Suzhou shows diners a live video of the kitchen. Photo: Shwangtianyuan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Robot cooking and dish delivery have since spread far beyond hotpot. On 30 September SoftBank Robotics said it would show four foodservice systems at EquipHotel in Paris from 2 to 5 November. One is the STEAMA steam cooking robot, which heats noodles and ingredients and serves a meal in about 90 seconds. Another, the BOTINKIT Omni, prepares up to 30 servings at once. The Servi Q serving robot, built with Bear Robotics, is 35 cm wide and can pass through aisles as narrow as 45 cm, a useful trick in a crowded hotpot dining room.

A serving robot carrying dishes to customers at a Gusto restaurant in Japan. Photo: Syced / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

ABB already supplies arms to a few automated kitchens. The Roboeatz ARK, an autonomous kitchen, uses an ABB IRB 4600 robot to move ingredients and cooked bowls. For a hotpot chain the closer match is the Haidilao job of picking packaged plates from cold storage and setting them on trays. An IRB 1200 Hygienic or a GoFa cobot could do that work, though this is only a possibility, since no hotpot chain has announced an ABB cell. Planners usually model such a cell first in RobotStudio, and the ABB robot use cases page shows similar food handling.

An ABB IRB 4600 robot inside the Roboeatz ARK autonomous kitchen. Photo: ABB

What comes next for hotpot robots in restaurants and homes

For chains, most of the growth will probably happen out of sight. Hotpot is easier to automate than wok cooking because the diner does the cooking, so a robot only has to store, pick, portion and send. Central kitchens that slice meat and pack vegetables for many outlets suit FlexPicker robots and palletizers. In the dining room, serving robots like those in our post on restaurant serving robots can carry trays and collect empty plates while staff look after the guests.

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

At home, hotpot already runs on simple machines: an electric pot, an induction plate and a fridge full of sliced meat. A home hotpot robot is unlikely soon, because most of the effort goes into shopping and slicing, and a robot that cooks would save little. The restaurant model is more likely to spread to smaller shops, with an order tablet, a refrigerated store and a compact arm or delivery robot. Countertop cooking robots like STEAMA show that one machine can already handle a narrow task such as heating noodles.

A Haidilao hotpot table with sliced meat, mushrooms and a bowl of noodles. Photo: Angelsu52 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Cost, safety and staff skills remain open questions. A kitchen with two rows of robot arms is a large investment for a chain and out of reach for most single restaurants, and dishes have to be prepacked in standard containers before any robot can pick them. Robots that cross a dining room full of boiling pots and children need reliable sensors and slow speeds near people. Staff also have to learn to restock, clean and reset the machines, which takes training that many restaurants have not yet planned for.

The ARK's gripper holding a freshly cooked bowl of pasta. Photo: ABB

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