This Robot Chef Can Chew, Taste, And Change The Seasoning As Needed

A "robot chef" introduced by researchers from the UK may just be the most advanced of its kind ever made so far.

The reason is that this bot, which is a product of robotics/engineering researchers from the University of Cambridge, can reportedly chew, taste, and adjust the seasoning of the food as needed, as reported by Sky News. With these "skills," the robot chef presents the hope that machines could one make food that people will not only enjoy, but also be tailored to suit specific tastes.

But this bot is not entirely new, however. It is actually the same bot that Cambridge introduced back in 2020 in a video titled "can robots make omelettes?" on YouTube. Here is that video:

This time, though, they upgraded the bot's capabilities to perform an approach called "taste as you go" which is a culinary ability that's almost exclusively human.

To be able to adjust the seasoning of the dish it is cooking, the robot simulates how food tastes differently when chewed. For example, biting into a fresh tomato will release its juices, and the saliva and digestive enzymes a human mouth produces will alter its flavor on the fly.

The researchers "trained" the bot by making it taste nine variations of tomatoes and scrambled eggs at three stages of the chewing process. Then, it made its own "taste maps" of the dishes it tried. Eventually, this led the bot to quickly assess how salty a dish is in an accurate way.

Grzegorz Sochaki, who is the first author of the paper on the robot chef's tasting capabilities, had this to say about the process:

"Most home cooks will be familiar with the concept of tasing as you go - checking a dish throughout the cooking process to check whether the balance of flavors is right. If robots are to be used for certain aspects of food preparation, it is important that they are able to 'taste' what they are cooking."

Will A Robot Chef Prepare Your Meals In The Future?

As previously mentioned, the Cambridge bot is more of an upgrade over the one they trained to cook omelettes back in 2020. Back then, they used machine learning to train the bot, but it wasn't really the only one of its kind.

Around a year later, another robot chef made headlines. A product of the London-based company Moley Robotics, the machine called Moley Robotic Kitchen was designed to prepare and serve up entire meals for domestic and even commercial purposes, as reported by the BBC.

Moley Robotics' machine was attached to rails on the ceiling. It features two robotic arms hanging down over the kitchen implements, and was programmed to cook over 5,000 different recipes. To choose what you want for the day, all you have to do is pick the dish on a touch screen, add the ingredients into its built-in containers, and then wait as it does all the rest of the work.

Here is an actual video of the robot chef preparing a cauliflower risotto, uploaded to the Moley Robotics official YouTube channel:

Would you be fine with machines cooking your daily meals?

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Written by RJ Pierce