5 ms·

I'm bullish on food robots in general, but I have to say that as a fan of caesar salad, the output of that robot fails to impress. It looks exactly like what it

by sho 9y ago

I'm bullish on food robots in general, but I have to say that as a fan of caesar salad, the output of that robot fails to impress. It looks exactly like what it is - a bunch of ingredients randomly dropped in a bowl. The lettuce hasn't even been tossed with the dressing! I wouldn't pay for that, and IMO this robot has a long way to go before I'd agree it can make a "mean" salad.

ekianjo 9y ago
Yeah, robots for food preparation I have seen in Japan are way more impressive than this one. Calling this a robot is an insult to properly designed robots. I would expect the salad to be mixed properly before it delivers the dish, at least.
- csydas 9y ago
  This one also didn't seem very clean in its operation - it was shooting stuff everywhere outside of the bowl and I didn't see any cleaning mechanism come through to mop up the mess. I'd be a bit more impressed on this if the end result didn't look like something made by one of PeeWee Herman's contraptions.
wiz21c 9y ago
I would add that if a bad cook can make an average salad, it doesn't make any easier to accept the fact that we make robots which can barely do better. In other words, instead of replacing the cook by a machine, we should train him to cook better. And we should train people to make the difference between a soulless dish and a good one. (I cook for myself and I can assure you that a machine can't cook; it can assemble ingredients, that's for sure but there's no creativity (and believe me, the simplest dish, if infused with creativity, can taste so much better))
- jo909 9y ago
  The creativity has to happen at the "design" stage. The best restaurants strive for perfect _repeatable_ dishes, and no cook has to improvise with spices or ingredients on a normal shift.
  - wavefunction 9y ago
    A good cook/chef can take a look at an ingredient or set of ingredients and vary their techniques to produce that 'repeatable' dish. I think you're completely discounting what cooking involves when it's someone with skill and experience, and that's unfortunate.
    - jo909 9y ago
      I'm just saying that the creativity usually is separated from the actual act of preparing a dish in a professional kitchen, robots or not. It lies in the receipt, good techniques, ingredient selection and sourcing. The creative part will always stay in the domain of skilled and experienced humans, no doubt about it. Mastering a technique might mean constant adoption to changing ingredients and parameters, temperatures, timing etc. That is not fundamentally impossible to teach to a robot. Massive knowledge, excellent sensory inputs of all kinds, precision motor skills etc are not creativity. Certainly there is a long way for robots to improve before they can handle what a human is able to. But I have no doubt that they will get there sooner or later.
- dagw 9y ago
  that's for sure but there's no creativity The last thing you want from your line chef is 'creativity'.

by sho 9y ago

ekianjo 9y ago

Yeah, robots for food preparation I have seen in Japan are way more impressive than this one. Calling this a robot is an insult to properly designed robots. I would expect the salad to be mixed properly before it delivers the dish, at least.

csydas 9y ago
This one also didn't seem very clean in its operation - it was shooting stuff everywhere outside of the bowl and I didn't see any cleaning mechanism come through to mop up the mess. I'd be a bit more impressed on this if the end result didn't look like something made by one of PeeWee Herman's contraptions.

wiz21c 9y ago

I would add that if a bad cook can make an average salad, it doesn't make any easier to accept the fact that we make robots which can barely do better. In other words, instead of replacing the cook by a machine, we should train him to cook better. And we should train people to make the difference between a soulless dish and a good one. (I cook for myself and I can assure you that a machine can't cook; it can assemble ingredients, that's for sure but there's no creativity (and believe me, the simplest dish, if infused with creativity, can taste so much better))

jo909 9y ago
The creativity has to happen at the "design" stage. The best restaurants strive for perfect _repeatable_ dishes, and no cook has to improvise with spices or ingredients on a normal shift.
- wavefunction 9y ago
  A good cook/chef can take a look at an ingredient or set of ingredients and vary their techniques to produce that 'repeatable' dish. I think you're completely discounting what cooking involves when it's someone with skill and experience, and that's unfortunate.
  - jo909 9y ago
    I'm just saying that the creativity usually is separated from the actual act of preparing a dish in a professional kitchen, robots or not. It lies in the receipt, good techniques, ingredient selection and sourcing. The creative part will always stay in the domain of skilled and experienced humans, no doubt about it. Mastering a technique might mean constant adoption to changing ingredients and parameters, temperatures, timing etc. That is not fundamentally impossible to teach to a robot. Massive knowledge, excellent sensory inputs of all kinds, precision motor skills etc are not creativity. Certainly there is a long way for robots to improve before they can handle what a human is able to. But I have no doubt that they will get there sooner or later.
dagw 9y ago
that's for sure but there's no creativity The last thing you want from your line chef is 'creativity'.