Noodle Making Robot: Hand Pulling to ABB Kitchens

A noodle making robot is up against cooks who spend years learning to stretch one lump of dough into a bundle of thin strands, or to shave ribbons of dough straight into a boiling pot. This post looks at how noodles were made by hand, how machines took over the dough in factories, and how robots reached the restaurant, from a noodle-slicing robot in 2012 to a robot noodle shop that opened for trials in Beijing this August. It ends with where ABB robots could fit, in kitchens and in noodle plants.

A cook pulls noodles by hand at Laohutan Ocean Park in Dalian, China, 2009. Photo: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How noodle masters pulled and sliced by hand

Pulled noodles, or lamian, are old and hard to learn. The earliest description of the pulling method is in a Ming dynasty food manual written in 1504 by Song Xu. The cook stretches a soft wheat dough to about an arm's span, loops it, and pulls again, so each fold doubles the number of strands and halves their thickness. Knife-cut noodles, or daoxiao mian, are a Shanxi specialty made a different way: the chef holds a block of dough and shaves ribbons off it into boiling water. A skilled chef can slice up to 200 strands a minute, and learning the technique can take years.

Noodle makers stretch long strands of dough at a night market stall in Xi'an, 2015. Photo: Ekem / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Machines took over the simpler noodles first. In the United States, a patent for a "machine for cutting noodles" was issued in May 1896, and by the 1930s companies such as the Consolidated Macaroni Machine Corporation in Brooklyn sold sheeters that rolled dough through sets of rollers to make thin, even sheets. In 1958 Momofuku Ando of Nissin Foods in Japan launched Chicken Ramen, the first instant noodles, and Nissin followed with Cup Noodles in 1971. Instant noodles became a factory product, made on long lines that cut, steam, fry or dry, and pack the noodles without a cook touching them.

A pasta sheeter built by the Consolidated Macaroni Machine Corporation in Brooklyn, around 1935, which rolled dough into thin sheets. Photo: Leonard J. DeFrancisci / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Restaurant noodles stayed in human hands much longer, and the first robot for that job came from Beijing. Restaurateur Cui Runguan said in 2012 that young people no longer wanted the tiring job of slicing noodles, so he built Chef Cui, a robot whose arm moves back and forth like a windshield wiper, shaving dough into the pot. NBC News reported that it cost about $2,000, less than half of a noodle slicer's yearly wage in China. By 2017 a similar robot in a chef's hat was slicing noodles at Kuen Noodle House in Houston, while people still pulled the other noodle types by hand.

A large bowl of knife-cut noodles, daoxiao mian, at a Beijing restaurant, 2020. Photo: N509FZ / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Robot noodle restaurants in 2026

This year the whole bowl is automated. On 14 August 2026 a 400 square meter robot noodle restaurant in Beijing's Fengtai district began trial operations, billed by its operator as the city's first fully commercialized robot noodle restaurant. Customers order with a QR code. A machine mixes flour and water, then presses and cuts the dough in seconds, the noodles cook automatically, dispensers add sauce, broth and toppings, and robot arms move the bowl onto a wheeled delivery robot. From flour to table takes just over three minutes. Staff still restock ingredients, watch the equipment, make drinks and clear tables.

An older noodle machine that presses and cuts dough, in a family noodle shop in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 2023. Photo: Wei Wan-Chen / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The equipment comes from Beijing Yuli Technology. Its deputy general manager, Yang Haibin, said the noodle machine has gone through five generations since development began around 2017, with engineers adjusting flour-to-water ratios, pressure and speed to get the texture right. Earlier systems, he said, automated only part of the process or were mainly for demonstration. Robot arms have cooked noodle dishes before, too. The Latvian startup Roboeatz built its ARK autonomous kitchen around an ABB IRB 4600, an industrial robot normally used to move heavy parts, and the ARK serves freshly cooked pasta bowls.

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

ABB does not make a noodle machine, and the Beijing restaurant does not say whose arms it uses. ABB does make arms for this kind of kitchen. The IRB 1200 Hygienic has an IP67 body, an IP69K stainless tool flange and food-grade NSF H1 oil, and ABB aims it at quick-service restaurants, kiosks and central kitchens. In a noodle shop it could, as a possibility, lift baskets of noodles out of the water, ladle broth and hand bowls to a delivery robot, much like the cooking cells described in our robotic wok cooking post.

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

Where noodle robots go next, at home and in factories

Factories will change the least, because noodle plants are already automated, but they still have gaps. Instant noodle and fresh noodle lines need people to load trays, pack mixed cases and stack cartons for shipping. ABB's IRB 360 FlexPicker, a fast delta robot that picks small food items off moving belts, and its IRB 460 and 660 palletizers are built for exactly these end-of-line jobs. Picking cells on a moving line are usually set up with conveyor tracking, so the robot follows each item as the belt runs.

Blocks of instant noodles move along a production line. Photo: Portal Vlade APV / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Homes are harder. Countertop pasta and noodle makers that mix, knead and extrude dough already exist, and they are the nearest thing to a home noodle robot. A full robot that pulls lamian would need hands that feel how the dough stretches, and we found no kitchen machine that does that. A cobot like ABB's GoFa, which has torque sensors in every joint and stops on contact, shows how an arm could share a small kitchen with people, but ABB sells it for factories and has announced no home cooking product.

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

Cost decides whether a noodle shop buys a robot. Chef Cui was cheap because it did one simple motion, while the Beijing restaurant's line took years and five machine generations to build. Every part that touches dough, broth or bowls also has to be cleaned daily, which is harder with arms, belts and dispensers than with a pot and a knife. And the staff change jobs: in Beijing they restock, watch the machines and clear tables. Nobody has yet shown a machine that pulls lamian the way a trained cook does, so for hand-pulled noodles you still need the cook.

A cook pulls noodles by hand at a restaurant in Jinhua, Zhejiang, 2024. Photo: MNXANL / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Innovation

AI solutions for effortless ABB robot control.

Automation

Robotics

ceojohntran@chatwithrobot.net

+84905311611

© 2025. All rights reserved.

qtran1215@gmail.com