Shawarma Robot: From Spit to ABB Robot Arms

Watch a lunch rush at a shawarma stand and the case for a shawarma robot is easy to see: one cook, a tall cone of meat, a long knife and a queue. This post covers how spit-roasted meat became street food, how doner slicing machines arrived, and where a shawarma robot that carves and wraps could fit today. It also looks at what ABB's robot arms could do in that job, and where ABB has no shawarma project we can point to.

A shawarma stack turning in a shop doorway in Aleppo, Syria, in 2008. Photo: Vyacheslav Argenberg / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

How the vertical spit turned meat into street food

Turning meat over a fire is ancient, and Ottoman cooks were stacking seasoned slices on a horizontal rotisserie at least as far back as the 17th century. Cağ kebab, still cooked this way in Erzurum, keeps that older style alive: skewers lie flat and the cook shaves meat off as it browns. The work is hot, repetitive and judged by eye, which is exactly what makes it hard to hand to a machine, because the cook decides slice by slice what is ready.

Cağ kebab skewers cooking flat over embers in Erzurum, Turkey. Photo: Zeynel Cebeci / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The vertical spit came later. According to Yavuz İskenderoğlu, his grandfather İskender Efendi had the idea in 1850s Bursa of standing the lamb upright instead of laying it on its side, though some accounts credit Hamdi Usta of Kastamonu around 1830. Either way, the stacked cone let fat baste the meat as it turned and gave the cook a clean face to carve. Arab cooks made their own version, which became shawarma, and Lebanese immigrants were selling it in restaurants in Mexico by the 1930s.

Iskender kebab served on a platter in Bursa, the town linked to the vertical spit. Photo: Benreis / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

The sandwich form came last. Kadir Nurman is credited with introducing the sandwich or wrap form in the early 1970s in West Berlin, where Turkish immigrants turned a plated dish into something a worker could eat on the move. The first doner shop in London opened in 1966, and such shops were a familiar sight in British provincial cities by the late 1970s. Gyros was already popular in Greece and New York City in 1971, and the Greek-Canadian donair appeared in 1972. Once the dish became fast food, volume started to push shops toward machines that could carve for them.

A doner sandwich in Berlin, the city where the sandwich form took off. Photo: AleGranholm / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Slicing robots in the kebab shop today

Machines that carve a doner are older than most people expect. Singularity Hub wrote in 2010 about a German firm, Alkadur, whose Doner-Robot used an overhead camera to guide the blade, and about a rival, Hyperslicer, that used pressure sensing to get an even number of slices from the cone. Retailer listings show Alkadur still sells robot-style electric and gas machines. These are purpose-built carvers rather than general robot arms, and a person still loads the meat and builds the plate.

A cook slices lamb from a vertical doner stack at a kebab house in Tottenham, London. Photo: Acabashi / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The idea is still being refined. US patent 12161130, which traces back to a 2017 Netherlands filing, describes an automatic cutting apparatus with a sensor that finds the meat on a vertical skewer and an actuator that moves the cutting device, aimed at shawarma, doner kebab or gyros. Restaurant robots are also in the news. On 13 October 2026 The National reported that Circus Group's CA-1 kitchen robot, with two arms and 36 ingredient silos, is being tested in Abu Dhabi, with a claimed cook time of about four minutes. Its menu is biryani and pasta, not shawarma.

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

Where do ABB robots fit? ABB has not announced a shawarma project, so this is only a possibility. Some of the pieces already exist. Delta robots such as the IRB 360 FlexPicker already pick and place food at line speed, which suits the wrapping and boxing stage, and the IRB 1200 Hygienic is designed for food handling. ABB's newest launch, the IRB 1700 family announced in mid October 2026, claims up to 20% shorter cycle times and comes with access to OmniCore EyeMotion and the AI Robot Trainer for vision work. Those arms target welding, sanding and machine tending, so they hint at where ABB is heading and are not a kebab tool.

An ABB IRB 1700ID arc welding demonstration at the China International Industry Fair, October 2026. Photo: ABB

What a home or factory shawarma robot still has to solve

At home, nobody sells a countertop shawarma robot, and the spit itself is the barrier. A home cook can marinate chicken and roast it on a small vertical grill, but carving thin, even slices from a hot, uneven cone needs sensing most kitchen devices lack. A more realistic near term product is the step after carving: a counter arm that assembles wraps from prepared fillings, closer to the bowl and burger assemblers restaurants already test. We cover that side in ABB robots in fast food kitchens.

A doner wrap, the kind of finished product a wrapping arm would have to assemble. Photo: Andy Li / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Factories have an easier version. A central kitchen can make doner cones and ready-to-cook skewers in volume, and robot cells can load, weigh and pack them. The open problems are hygiene, since the cell must be cleaned every shift, and cost, because commentators note that most kebab shops are small family businesses that cannot buy an industrial cell. ABB's YuMi, shown finishing burgers at BurgerBots in Los Gatos, California, is the nearest ABB comparison for assembling a wrap, though no one has shown it on shawarma.

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

Safety and skills are the last hurdles. A knife, hot metal and a customer standing a metre away mean any robot carver needs guarded zones or force limiting, the territory of SafeMove and collaborative arms. Programs for a job like this are usually built and tested first in RobotStudio, where a cell can be simulated before it touches any meat. I expect the first real shawarma robots to be carving machines with better sensors, with arms that wrap and pack arriving after. More kitchen and factory examples are in ABB robot use cases.

An engineer programs a robot cell in RobotStudio next to an ABB industrial robot. Photo: ABB

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