A robot that cooks: Is the Future here?

Ever since we met Rosie, the homely robot maid on The Jetsons, we have been hoping, wishing and dreaming for the day that robotic household help would be a reality. 

Yaskawa:

Well, the day doesn’t seem to be too far away. In fact it might already be here in the form of Yaskawa Motoman SDA10. It might be as eloquent a name as Rosie – but Yaskawa (that’s what we are going to call him from now) is a dual arm industrial robot with robotiq universal grippers. 

Wait, that’s not the fancy part, get this – Yaskawa can make you an egg sandwich at the touch of a button. No, we aren’t kidding. He might now know what an egg sandwich is or how delicious it is and why you crave it so much but he certainly can make you one. Watch the fascinating video below. 

So once we read about Yaskawa, we couldn’t wait to see if there more prototypes out there that are designed to make our daily cooking just a bit easier. And surprisingly, there is. 

Meet the product from Moley Robotics: 

Earlier this year, Moley Robotics unveiled a product at Hannover Messe, a trade fair for industrial technology in Germany. Comprised of two robotic arms in a specially designed kitchen, which includes a stove top, utensils and a sink, the device is able to reproduce the movements of a human chef in order to create a meal from scratch. The robot learns the movements after they are performed by a human chef, captured on a 3D camera and uploaded into the computer.

This robot is capable of making a delicious crab bisque in less than half an hour. The robot was trained by Chef Tim Anderson who spent time whipping up the original dish in a motion-capture studio. The robot can do everything right from selecting the right heat level on the stove-top to adding the pre-arranged ingredients at just the right moment to operating a small mixer, the robot arms made the soup from scratch. It even plates the soup and even scraps the bottom of the ladle against the rim of the saucepan in order to prevent drips.

According to Moley’s website, the firm hopes to bring a consumer version to market by 2017 that will feature several additions, including a library of thousands of recipes, a dishwasher and a refrigerator. This means you not only won’t have to cook or prep for yourself if you can’t be bothered, but you don’t even need to wash up afterward. We can’t wait! As much as we love cooking we wouldn’t mind having an option at the end of a long day at work. Would you buy the robot that cooks? 

Watch Moley’s robot in actions below