Roti Maker Robot: Rolling Pins to ABB FlexPickers

How the roti maker robot grew from rolling pins and tortilla presses to tortilla factories, Rotimatic and a Nairobi chapati line, and where ABB robots fit in.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

10/8/20265 min read

Few foods are made by hand as often as flatbread. Millions of households roll roti, chapati or tortillas every day, one round at a time, and a roti maker robot promises to do all of it, from mixing the dough to puffing the bread. This post follows flatbread from the rolling pin and the tortilla press to the tortilla factories of Mexico. Then it looks at countertop machines like Rotimatic and big chapati lines like the one a Nairobi school kitchen switched on in August 2026, and at where ABB food robots such as the IRB 360 FlexPicker fit in.

Woman in a red sari holding a roti with tongs over a stove in a tiled home kitchen

A home cook in India makes rotis for the family dinner on a gas stove, 2004. Photo: Biswarup Ganguly / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

How flatbread was rolled, pressed and cooked by hand

A roti needs only whole wheat flour and water, sometimes with a little oil and salt, but making a good one takes practice. The cook kneads a soft dough, pinches off a ball and rolls it into a thin, even circle with a rolling pin. It goes onto a hot griddle and is often finished over an open flame so it puffs up. A family can easily eat dozens in a day, so in many homes rolling roti is a daily job that comes around at every meal.

Woman standing at an outdoor stove next to a large round griddle covered with a flatbread

A woman cooks roti on a large griddle over a wood fire in Yellankini village, India, 2020. Photo: Adbh266 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

In Mexico and Central America, the corn tortilla had its own hand method. Cooks shaped balls of masa, the dough made from treated corn, and patted them flat between their palms before cooking them on a griddle called a comal. The household tortilla press, two hinged plates closed with a lever, made the shaping faster and more even. Presses like this are still made in Mexico and sold in shops abroad, and a cook can flatten a ball of masa with one pull of the handle.

Open round metal tortilla press with a long handle lying on a patterned rug

A household tortilla press made in Mexico, shown open. Photo: Jim Heaphy (Cullen328) / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Factories came next. Corn masa was sticky and jammed early machines, and masa harina, a dried corn flour, was developed partly to make mass production possible. Tortilla machines spread widely in the 1950s, and the number of tortilla factories in Mexico rose from 2,214 in 1945 to 23,216 in 1980. Modern lines use dough sheeters or extruders and carry the rounds through ovens on conveyors, and some turn out 30,000 tortillas an hour. Wheat roti and chapati lines work the same way, pressing, baking and puffing in stages.

Old steel tortilla machine with a conveyor of round corn tortillas above a large pot

A tortilla machine cutting and cooking corn rounds for tortilla chips, 2003. Photo: Tjeerd Wiersma / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Roti maker robots in homes and school kitchens today

The first home roti robot came from Singapore. Zimplistic, founded in 2008 by mechanical engineer Pranoti Nagarkar and computer scientist Rishi Israni, began shipping Rotimatic in 2016. The owner fills it with flour, water and oil and picks the thickness and softness, and the machine makes the dough, flattens it and cooks a roti in about 90 seconds. By April 2021 more than 70,000 units had been sold in 20 countries. Owner reviews were mixed, with complaints about reliability and repair costs, and a newer Rotimatic Plus came out in 2023 at $1,699.

Long industrial griddle covered with rows of round chapatis in a big temple kitchen hall

A large automated chapati maker in the Guru ka Langar kitchen at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, 2013. Photo: BOMBMAN / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Big automatic lines sit at the other end of the scale. On 27 August 2026 Nairobi County unveiled a chapati making machine in the kitchen at Toi Primary School, part of its Dishi na County school feeding program, where it is expected to add variety to the meals served in Nairobi public schools. Kenyan outlet K24 reported a stated capacity of up to 2,000 chapatis an hour, about one every two seconds. Dough is mixed separately and fed in. The machine divides it into portions, presses or rolls them thin, and carries them by conveyor through heated stages that cook each side and then puff the bread.

Pale tortillas moving in a row along a metal conveyor out of a pressing machine

A tortilla production line in Mexico, where pressed rounds move on a conveyor into the oven. Photo: ArmandoRodriguez / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB does not make a roti machine. Its food robots work where flatbread lines end, picking, stacking and packing. The IRB 360 FlexPicker is a fast delta robot that, with ABB's PickMaster software and a camera, picks products off a moving belt. In Sweden the pastry maker Delicato uses four IRB 360 robots to pick chocolate balls into blisters. On a flatbread line, a cell like that could, as a possibility, count hot rounds and stack them into packs, using the method explained in our module on conveyor tracking.

Several ABB delta robots with blue arms picking round sweets from a conveyor behind glass

ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker robots picking chocolate balls at Delicato's bakery in Sweden. Photo: ABB

Where roti maker robots go from here

Home machines have to get cheaper and smaller, and they have to be easier to clean. Rotimatic proved that people will pay for fresh roti at the push of a button. Its reviews also showed the weak points: reliability, uneven results and expensive repairs. Countertop tortilla machines are already common in restaurants, such as the Sabor machine photographed in Orlando in 2016. A home robot that could handle other flours, such as millet or corn, would reach many more kitchens than one built for wheat alone.

Stainless steel tortilla machine on a stand dropping a fresh tortilla onto a tray

A Sabor countertop tortilla machine in a restaurant in Orlando, Florida, 2016. Photo: elisfkc / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

In factories and large kitchens, the open question is what happens after the oven. Hot, soft flatbreads stick together and tear, which makes them hard for a gripper to pick up. ABB's IRB 1200 Hygienic is designed for food handling and washdown, and soft grippers on the FlexPicker already move delicate pastries. Cells built from these robots could, as a possibility, take over stacking and bagging at the end of a flatbread line. Our post on fast food kitchen automation shows how the same kind of robots work in burger kitchens.

White delta robot above glass tubes holding stacked tomato and onion slices

An ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker stacking burger toppings at BurgerBots. Photo: ABB

Price decides most of this. A big chapati line pays off in a school program or a factory that feeds thousands, but a small bakery or a family may never earn back the cost. Every food machine also has to be easy to clean and safe to touch, and each new type of dough needs new settings. On the lines that do automate, operators will spend their shifts adjusting machines and robots, and engineers will test packing cells in simulation before building them.

Close view of a robot gripper with blue soft rubber fingers above a conveyor

A soft FlexPicker gripper built for delicate pastries. Photo: ABB

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