The salad-making robot

When it comes to making salads, the kind of ingredients and toppings used are very important. Or else, a healthy meal might have more calories than a fattening hamburger. What if you can easily measure the amount of calories in the each salad that you choose to have? Does it sound near-to-impossible? Not anymore! A California-based company has developed a food robot that dispenses the quantities of ingredients, and offers details on the precise amount of calories used in each salad. It’s named Sally. In about 60 seconds, the robot can make more than 1000 different types of ready-to-eat salads. Isn’t that awesome? The green-and-brown robot is the brain child of Chowbotics Inc., one among the major companies in the potential million dollar market of food robots.

Why Sally? It’s possibly the “next generation of salad restaurant”, and can make tasty salads faster than humans. Adding more advantage is the feature that helps count the calories in each salad. Moreover, the level of hygiene is matchless when a machine prepares a salad, rather than getting it done by multiple people.

Does that mean the robot doesn’t need any human help? Absolutely not! Here is the human touch in Sally – The food robot doesn’t do all the chores right from start to finish. A human has to slice and fill up the ingredients into the canisters. The ingredients are stored in refrigerated compartments. You can simply place a bowl in the salad dispensing area, and later customize the order from the given menu. Based on calorie count, you can add or remove toppings as required. Once the selection is done, Sally will soon start preparing the salad.

The salad robot comes in compact size, weighs close to 350 pounds, and hardly occupies the same amount of space as that of a small dorm room refrigerator. It uses 21 different ingredients such as kale, romaine, Parmesan, and cherry tomatoes to make appetizing salads in less than a minute, while you can watch the entire process. In its current avatar, Sally is ideal for business settings and not for home kitchens. But after going “on a diet” quite soon, home users too might get a concise version of this remarkable salad making robot.

Will Sally improve its culinary skills? Will it be able to cook some scrumptious ethnic foodstuffs? May be in its next incarnation, if all goes well!

Flippy - The burger-flipping robot

Robots have reached the world of fast-food as well, thanks to Miso Robotics, an offshoot of CaliBurger, a West Coast burger chain. They have made a burger-flipping robot named Flippy. Why Flippy? Be it working around grill and fryer or doing the preparation works like chopping onions, food service robots can do the chores way more quickly and perfectly than humans.

What makes Flippy standout? As we all know, flipping burgers is not an easy job. There are many common hazards associated with the job, such as slips, trips, cuts, and burns. With increasing demand for burgers, humans need a reliable helping hand to cook more burgers quickly, and serve the increasing number of burger lovers across the world in a time bound manner. This is where Flippy enters. The robotic kitchen assistant works wonders when it comes to burger-making. It can detect, flip, and grill tasty burger patties.

Flippy looks like a small wheeled cart with a six-axis robotic arm. The robot can be installed either in front of or next to any grill or fryer. It uses thermal and 3D sensors as well as advanced cameras to get clear understanding about the environment around. Flippy leverages artificial intelligence technologies to solve some of the biggest pain points that burger chefs often deal with. A.I. enables Flippy to be trainable and adaptable. It might soon learn and cook new foods based on seasonal menu changes.

Fast, safe, and makes no mistakes – Flippy outsmarts humans with these three advantages. It can grab unwrapped burger patties, place them on hot grills, keep track of temperature and cooking time, and alert cooks when to add toppings or cheese. However, Flippy can just plate burger and cannot wrap them or add finishing touches.

Wondering if several burger chefs are going to lose their jobs with the arrival of Flippy? No, they won’t. Flippy cannot fully displace humans. Though it can handle many repetitive tasks simultaneously and perfectly, it cannot completely replace human touch. That said, chefs of some top restaurants might soon find this co-worker in their kitchens.