A U.K. robotics firm has developed a robot that can help replicate the gastronomical experience of dining on first-class, professionally-cooked dishes created by the world's top chefs.
The all-in-one robotic kitchen invented by Moley Robotics can create any dish from scratch by mimicking the actions of a human being preparing that dish. The first Moley Robotics Kitchen, which took the audience at the Hanover Messe industrial festival in awe, demonstrated how it can cook a crab bisque by copying the exact hand and arm movements of BBC's Masterchef winner Tim Anderson.
The new kitchen robot comes with a set of two very expensive arms and hands that was developed by Shadow Robot, the same company that supplies robotic hands for NASA. Each hand has 24 joints and 20 motors and has access to the robot's own built-in sink, hob, oven and work surface.
The demonstration showed the robot adeptly acting out all the steps in Anderson's recipe, from turning on the hob, gently slicing a pat of butter, blending the tomatoes in a pot and stirring the tomato in with the other ingredients. It can also place the finished crab bisque into a clean, white bowl with no drips.
Moley Robotics plans to sell its new invention to the U.K. public by 2017. During the two years between now and then, the company hopes it can find a way to mass produce its robots and reduce the cost to £10,000, or approximately $14,600. That may seem expensive, but a survey carried out by The Times shows most Britons spend between £5,000 ($7,388) and £20,000 ($29,545) for their kitchens.
Since this kitchen robot already has a number of kitchen appliances and furniture built in, it is likely to appeal to homeowners with a bigger budget and who want to have an automated machine cook dinner for them while they chill out in the living room to wait. In the future, Moley Robotics is also considering adding a dishwasher since right now, the kitchen robot can only place the used pans and dishes in the sink.
However, unlike other robots, the Moley Robotics Kitchen is not exactly intelligent, as it simply uses a recording of Anderson's movements taken by motion capture cameras in five takes to re-create the dish. Moreover, it still needs to have the ingredients prepared and placed exactly where Anderson placed them in his own kitchen so that the robot's actions are exactly in line with where all the ingredients and tools are. It doesn't know if the bowl placed in front of it is chili or cream cheese, and it doesn't care what ingredients go into the pan.
Nonetheless, Moley Robotics has a good two years to further develop its invention, and, hopefully, incorporate sensors into the robot so it can actually "see" what it is picking up instead of simply copying human movements.
As for the crab bisque, people who have tasted it say it was delicious. Asked who makes a better crab bisque, him or the robot, Anderson said the robot.
"It's more reliable. It makes a good bisque every time," he said. "I'm only human — there's a lot more variation when I make it."
Check out this video taken by Ars Technica to watch the Moley Robotics Kitchen at work.
