Moley Robotics will launch kitchen robot in 2017.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Don’t feel like cooking tonight? You could order out, or if Moley Robotics has their way, you may soon be able to have your robot chef whip up a meal for you.
Recipes are selected via an app, “with the machine being able to stir, adjust the hob, pick up bottles, pour jugs, and perform other movements,” according to the Independent.
So far the robo-chef has been taught to make crab bisque, and the machine will have a library of 2,000 dishes to pull from by the time it’s launched for the consumer market in 2017.
Why crab bisque? “Crab bisque is a challenging dish for a human chef to make, never mind a robot,” Tim Anderson, winner of 2011’s season of MasterChef in the U.K., explained to Time Magazine. “If it can make bisque, it can make a whole lot of other things.”
The robot was in fact taught one of Anderson’s recipes for crab bisque, and when asked if he feels at threatened by seeing a machine expertly recreate one of his recipes, Anderson is somewhat surprisingly on the side of the technology. “Some people ask if this is going to put my out of a job. This has already given me a job.”
“We want people to be comfortable with this device,” London-based Moley’s Mark Oleynik told the BBC. “It’s not an industrial device; it’s not a device that works at 10-times normal speed. No, it’s a device that moves like you move, and at the same speed as you do.”
Moley Robotics’ endgame is to introduce a consumer version of the machine that costs £10,000, or about $14,800. The BBC revealed it will primarily be aimed at urban apartment dwellers whose space is at a premium.