Religious Robot: From Temple Automata to ABB Arms

A religious robot sounds like a contradiction, yet machines have shared space with worship for a very long time. Temple doors that opened on their own, a clockwork friar that walks and prays, a blessing machine in Martin Luther's town and an android that preaches on the Heart Sutra in Kyoto all belong to the same story. This post looks at how automata entered temples and churches, what today's robot preachers actually do and how faith leaders are thinking about AI. It also asks plainly where industrial robots such as ABB's could fit around places of worship, and where they have no role at all.

The sixteenth century automaton of a friar at the National Museum of American History. Photo: National Museum of American History via Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

How temples and churches used automata before robots

The oldest examples come from Hero of Alexandria, a Greek engineer who probably worked in the first century AD. His Pneumatica describes temple doors that seemed to open by themselves. A fire on the altar heated air in a closed chamber, the air pushed water into a hanging vessel, and the weight of that vessel pulled ropes that swung the doors open. Another of his devices released a measured amount of water when a coin dropped onto a small pan, which tipped a lever and opened a valve. Centuries later, religious figures started moving on public clocks. In Prague, figures of the Apostles were added to the astronomical clock after a repair in 1787 to 1791, and they still parade past its windows every hour.

Figures of the Apostles James the Less and Peter in the windows of the Prague astronomical clock. Photo: Karelj via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Clockwork made a more personal kind of automaton possible. The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History holds a sixteenth century friar made of wood and iron, about 15 inches tall. A key-wound spring hidden inside its body drives it. The friar walks in a square, strikes its chest with its right arm, raises a small cross and rosary, turns its head, rolls its eyes and moves its lips. Tradition credits Juanelo Turriano, mechanician to Emperor Charles V, and tells of a vow made by Philip II of Spain at the bedside of his gravely ill son. Museum records are more careful about who made it, so the story is best read as legend.

The friar automaton with its robe, winding keys, cross and rosary laid out beside it. Photo: National Museum of American History via Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Robots built for religious settings only arrived in the last decade. In 2017 the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau set up BlessU-2 at the World Reformation Exhibition in Wittenberg, held for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. It was built on a machine first designed for banking, and visitors chose a voice and a kind of blessing drawn from Bible verses. The church said it wanted to start a conversation about blessing in a digital age and that the machine was never meant to replace pastors. That August, Nissei Eco showed SoftBank's Pepper robot chanting sutras and tapping a drum at the Life Ending Industry Expo in Tokyo, offered at about 50,000 yen per funeral.

A SoftBank Pepper robot in Japan in 2014, the model Nissei Eco programmed to chant sutras. Photo: nesnad via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

Robot preachers and AI in places of worship today

The best known case is Mindar, an android at Kōdai-ji, a Zen temple in Kyoto founded in 1606. Temple staff and Osaka University roboticists, among them Hiroshi Ishiguro, began building it in 2017, and it was unveiled in March 2019. Mindar takes the form of Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion, and gives a 25 minute sermon on the Heart Sutra written by Rinzai monks. The whole project cost about 100 million yen. A study led by Joshua Conrad Jackson later found that people rated sermons from Mindar as less credible than sermons from human priests, and they gave smaller donations afterwards.

A gate at Kōdai-ji in Kyoto, the Zen temple where the android Mindar gives sermons. Photo: 663highland via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Mindar turned up in the news again this month. On 2 October 2026 PetaPixel reviewed Futures Past, the first monograph by photographer Spencer Lowell. One of its 57 pictures shows Mindar in Kyoto in 2019, with a person in dark robes bowing deeply before the robot. Religious leaders are also writing about AI itself: Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, in May 2026, on protecting the human person in the age of artificial intelligence. Most religious uses of AI today are software, such as chatbots and translation, and physical robots in places of worship are still rare experiments.

Halls and the garden at Kōdai-ji, Kyoto, 2017. Photo: 663highland via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB does not make religious robots, and we found no ABB robot working in a temple or church. Its closest public moment came in 2017, when a YuMi robot conducted the Lucca Philharmonic Orchestra with tenor Andrea Bocelli at the Teatro Verdi in Pisa. Conductor Andrea Colombini had taught it his movements by lead-through, guiding the arms by hand. That performance shows a two armed cobot following a human's gestures in front of an audience. A GoFa CRB 15000 or a single-arm YuMi can be taught by hand in the same way, and our museum guide robot post covers cobots in other public buildings.

ABB's YuMi conducts the Lucca Philharmonic with Andrea Bocelli in Pisa, 2017. Photo: ABB

What comes next for robots in places of worship

At home, the near future probably belongs to software and small devices more than to robot priests. Smart speakers can already play prayers, readings or music at set times, and companion robots for older people may add reminders and video calls to services they can no longer attend in person. How far such aids should go is a question each community will answer for itself. Mindar's sermon is fixed and was written by monks, and the temple decides what it says. That arrangement, where people choose the content and the machine delivers it, looks likely to remain the usual one.

Lead-through teaching: moving an ABB GoFa arm by hand. Photo: ABB

For factories and workshops, the realistic job for industrial robots is behind the scenes. Stonemasons at Washington National Cathedral have used a robotic arm to help carve replacement stone after the 2011 earthquake, though the reports we found do not name the make. ABB arms already sand and finish wood and handle heavy parts in other industries. A similar cell could, as a possibility, rough out carvings or finish pews and furniture before a craftsperson adds the detail. Programs like these are usually built and checked first in RobotStudio before a robot touches valuable material.

An ABB robot works on a long wooden part clamped in a fixture, with dust hoses overhead. Photo: ABB

Most of the open problems concern trust and money. Mindar's project ran to about 100 million yen, a sum few congregations could raise. Safety matters wherever robots stand near crowds, which is why cobots with force sensing and tools such as SafeMove exist. Acceptance is harder to engineer. The research on Mindar suggests people find robot preachers less credible, and the church behind BlessU-2 stressed that pastors stay in charge of pastoral work. Skills are a further gap, since few temples or parishes have anyone who can program or maintain a robot.

An X-ray of the friar automaton's head, showing the metal parts hidden inside. Photo: National Museum of American History via Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

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