Is Your Kitchen Ready for a Robochef?
Room by room, Jetsons-esque gizmos and gadgets are taking over the home, each one smarter than the next. Between now and the new year, a slew of connected devices will hit the market. However, the crème de la crème come in the form of domestic robots, and the ones we want the most will be in the kitchen, as top tech companies are cooking up plans to elevate the culinary experience, compliments of your very own AI-powered co-chef. With a robotic helper to handle the chopping, pouring, and whisking, intelligent kitchens will reach a new level of genius.
At this year’s Kitchen and Bath Industry Show, Samsung unveiled its as-yet-unreleased Bot Chef, which entails a set of sleek robotic arms optimized for kitchen use alongside a human chef. It boasts six degrees of movement and the same diameter and reach as a human arm.
Sony has followed suit and is currently in research mode with Carnegie Mellon University to develop its own version of AI-operated food prep, cooking, and delivery. The two teams are aiming to create an autonomous kitchen robot that’s completely customizable, based on everything from personal dietary restrictions to ingredient availability in the home.
Across the pond, London-based Moley Robotics is in the final development phase of its own set of fully articulated arms that function within a glass-enclosed cook station that’s built into your countertop with a range and sink. This robochef can cook any given recipe chosen from an iTunes-style library on the app, plate it, and even clean the dishes. The automation was crafted from recordings of BBC MasterChef winner Tim Anderson, so we can only imagine how delectable each dish it whips up will be!
On a similarly smart note, ED resident chef Daniel Boulud has also joined the robotic kitchen brigade, signing on as culinary director and key investor to a first-of-its-kind fully automated fast-casual restaurant in downtown Boston. At Spyce, developed by a group of MIT students, human employees will add the finishing garnishes, but each meal is otherwise made to order in three minutes or less—by robots.
“I needed to come to Boston,” Boulud says. “I discovered that the robotic kitchen brings precision, consistency, taste, and also freshness to the preparation.” While for now it may just be food for thought, come 2020, that precision could be part of your household. And we bet that’s something kitchen connoisseurs and novices alike will savor.
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