Robotics think tanks have created robotic chefs that can perform various cooking tasks, with some models even resembling popular cartoon characters. Carnegie Mellon University and other institutions have produced robots with wide-ranging capabilities, including receiving verbal commands and performing intricate tasks. The most advanced robot chef of 2011, invented by Chinese Liu Changfa, can be programmed with hundreds of recipes and responds to verbal signals with witty returns.
While still financially unattainable for most average households, a number of robotics think tanks around the world have devised robotic chefs to perform a variety of prep, cooking or baking tasks – some even entertaining as they whip up a range of recipes. Some models are more compact or versatile than others. A Chinese robot chef model even resembles the iconic family robot, Rosie, from the popular American cartoon The Jetson’s, but without the cleaning experience and butleresqe bouncing watchers.
According to a 2010 New York Times article, 17 faculty members at Carnegie Mellon University have teamed up in recent years to create a handful of robots that do many common kitchen tasks. A teenage-sized Snackbot serves as a gopher, baker, and shaker. The Motoman food processor can perform a restaurant-sized grilling task with aplomb – an advance with the potential to pique the interest of restaurant owners and draw the ire of human chefs.
China boasts of being the first country to create a robot chef, Fanxing Science and Technology Corporation’s AIC-AI food processor made in 2006. Costing about 750,000 US dollars (USD) to make, the AIC-AI could perform most cooking operations, often with its own internal convection oven. Later models of robot robots from this and other groups could also be taught to use external ovens, as long as the software was compatible.
Other R&D efforts followed, such as those at Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory in Switzerland, all of which produced robots with wide-ranging capabilities for receiving verbal commands and performing intricate tasks like cracking an egg. Many other efforts have tackled more specific and mundane cooking tasks. A Japanese restaurant named Famen features two ramen-making robots who entertain with knives during their downtime. Others are designed for just making pancakes, omelettes, or performing unpopular prep tasks like peeling potatoes or slicing onions.
The most advanced and multi-purpose robot chef of 2011 – such as the one invented by Chinese Liu Changfa which was featured in 2007 on CNET’s gadget blog – will allow its users to program hundreds of recipes and command the robot chef with verbal signals to which the robot he replies with often witty returns. Before starting the meal, Changfa’s robot will prepare a drink for the guests to make the wait more bearable. The wait is then rewarded with the breadth of data from the on-board computer. Some modern robots have been programmed to include every dish from different regions of China.
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