Let’s face it, how can you enjoy family time, Christmas dinner or the holidays with your nose to the grindstone
The alternative to food preparation
The following written content from Kitti Palmai and Will Smale
But for future Christmases there is now a new alternative – get a robot chef to do everything.
A number of tech firms are now developing robots that can cook and plate up entire meals, both for commercial and domestic kitchens.
One of those at the forefront is London-based Moley Robotics, which is due to release its product, the Moley Robotic Kitchen, next year.
Attached to rails fitted to the ceiling, two robotic arms hang down over your oven and hob, and can cook more than 5,000 different recipes. You just pick the dish in question on a touch screen, add the ingredients it tells you to the built-in containers, and it does everything else.
It can turn on the oven and hob, pick up and put down saucepans and spatulas, stir, whisk and flip.
To help develop the robot, Moley employed the services of professional chef Tim Anderson, who back in 2011 won the BBC’s MasterChef TV competition.
He explains how he would make dishes, and the robot would be programed to copy his movement.
“I would cook through the recipe in a kitchen with a layout to that of the Moley kitchen, and my movements would be recorded, and then transferred onto the robotic hands and arms,” says Mr Anderson.
“Those movements would then be streamlined by the robotics team, and in the end, we wound up with a consistent program that would produce the same dish every time.”
Moley’s chief executive Mark Oleynik says the system operates behind a glass screen so that the robotic arms cannot knock into a human.
“As an additional measure, we have safety radar systems able to detect any unwanted impacts between the robot and any surface and immediately stop the operation, thus mitigating any such risks altogether.”
Mr Oleynik adds that the robot chef could indeed help you make your Christmas Day meal. But for any home cook wishing to rush to place an order, there is currently a significant problem – the cost.
The minimum price of a Moley Robotic Kitchen is £150,000. Other similarly expensive kitchen robot systems are being developed by Israel’s Kitchen Robotics, and US firm Dexai Robotics. Read more from BBC
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