World’s first robotic chef launching in 2022 could be yours for £150k
The world’s first robot chef, which can cook and serve meals in restaurants and at home, hits the market next year next thanks to incredible British developers Moley Robotics.
The ‘Robotic Kitchen’ is programmed to cook over 5,000 recipes, which can be chosen via a touch screen. The only human input required is adding the ingredients by hand to built-in containers, then the robot does the rest of the work.
The robots come in the form of two robotic arms which are attached to special rails on the ceiling and hang over the hob and oven space. They can in turn on induction stoves, use utensils to flip, whisk and stir and they even put things away when they are done.
Moley Kitchen Robotics was founded in 2014 by Mark Oleynik, a Russian mathematician and computer scientist to help people save time and stick to their dietary needs.
The robot was developed with the help of 2011 BBC Masterchef winner, Tim Anderson, who helped lab technicians to programme the robot to accurately copy his movements as he cooked.
Anderson told the BBC: “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,
“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.”
The Moley Robotic Kitchen is currently priced at £150,000, but this hefty cost is expected to decrease as the business continues to grow, according to the BBC.
Robot chefs are also being developed in other countries worldwide. In Israel, SavorEat has created a robot chef that can make plant-based burgers. It hopes to be serving these burgers in Israel-based offices for major companies including Google, Playtika, and Meta (previously Facebook), according to The Jerusalem Post.
In the USA, some restaurants have also started robots to serve their meals to help them out with staff shortages due to the pandemic over the past two years, according to The New York Times.
A Florida-based restaurant has started using a robot called Servi, created by Japanese company Softbank and California-based Bear Robotics. The robot has cameras and laser sensors which help it carry plates of food from the kitchen to the restaurant, which allows waiters to serve more tables, resulting in larger tips.
Robots have also been developed over the past year to help out in food delivery services. In November, takeaway giant Uber Eats partnered with Postmate’s Serve Robotics to trial their self-delivery robots.
