If you love to cook so much that you want to make it your profession, think again, because robots are increasingly creeping into the kitchen. Although robots that cook are nothing new, those that have been introduced recently by a cutting-edge restaurant in China’s Heilongjiang Province are something you might not have seen before. Unlike the existing robots that can dish out a specific item, these chefs can prepare a wide variety of recipes.
The fact they can do something so essentially human is inspiring. “The dishes taste just as those made by human chefs,” one diner told the BBC. “If no one tells me, I think people won’t see the difference”. Furthermore, they save money. The restaurant manager says he spends as little as $1.60 (Dh5.87) a month on robot maintenance. Robot waiters cost 30 cents.
It’s true that they can’t make independent judgments about tastes and smell. For example, the one “programmed” to make chow mein might be able to customise your dish based on variables such as the proportion of noodles to chicken and vegetables, but it can’t make your soup spicier on its own. But what if different recipes and some ways of evaluating their taste could be programmed into a robot chef? Perhaps, the only reason they can’t do it is because we haven’t yet designed them like that.
