3 ms·

Robots are not very good at manipulating things, especially things that are flexible or things with a variety of shapes. So one of the biggest problems that ing

by gene-h 8y ago

Robots are not very good at manipulating things, especially things that are flexible or things with a variety of shapes. So one of the biggest problems that ingredients don't come in standardized containers. So either one has to sell every ingredient in a special cartridge or the human has to load ingredients into the machine. Now since some ingredients are perishable this makes loading the machine weekly and producing cartridges difficult. If a human has to manually load the machine then the human is still doing quite a bit of labor. Now making simple baked meals such as casserole are harder than they look for robots. So we can probably mix ingredients together, we might be able to slice vegetables, but getting an mixture of ingredients into a baking pan might be difficult. Even simpler is stir fry, and there are already robots that do this[0] In addition, it is also worth pointing out that devices that manipulate granular materials(flour, rice, salt, etc) are not very reliable[1] [0]https://www.businessinsider.com/mit-students-invented-a-robotic-kitchen-2016-4?r=UK&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/mit-students-invented-a-robo... [1]https://www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R3216.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R3216.html

wahern 8y ago
I don't understand why freeze dried ingredients aren't more common. I understand it takes considerable energy, but it seems like one of those problems of scale that you could throw money at, like batteries, and really change the market dynamics for considerable profit. With freeze dried ingredients you could much more easily create standard containers to hold chopped vegetables and protein. It's a short step to then create a machine that can create a diverse array of sauces on demand; and many cooking styles are centered around sauces. Casseroles would work similarly. There's a niche market for freeze dried foodstuffs that caters to the survivalist community, but it's expensive. I think most preppers buy traditionally preserved items--heat drying, salted, etc. Bringing down the cost of freeze drying such that you could enable new markets would require tremendous scale, but the money is there. We just need an Elon Musk-type person to put the cash to work. I guess I should point out that freeze drying foodstuffs substantially preserves taste and, to a lesser extent, texture. Nothing else comes close. I have a cabinet full of freeze dried, chopped herbs, including red onions and garlic; they're simply incomparable to regular dried herbs and essentially obviate the need to buy (and plan ahead for) fresh herbs. Freeze drying preserves the volatile compounds that provide depth of flavor.

by gene-h 8y ago

wahern 8y ago

I don't understand why freeze dried ingredients aren't more common. I understand it takes considerable energy, but it seems like one of those problems of scale that you could throw money at, like batteries, and really change the market dynamics for considerable profit. With freeze dried ingredients you could much more easily create standard containers to hold chopped vegetables and protein. It's a short step to then create a machine that can create a diverse array of sauces on demand; and many cooking styles are centered around sauces. Casseroles would work similarly. There's a niche market for freeze dried foodstuffs that caters to the survivalist community, but it's expensive. I think most preppers buy traditionally preserved items--heat drying, salted, etc. Bringing down the cost of freeze drying such that you could enable new markets would require tremendous scale, but the money is there. We just need an Elon Musk-type person to put the cash to work. I guess I should point out that freeze drying foodstuffs substantially preserves taste and, to a lesser extent, texture. Nothing else comes close. I have a cabinet full of freeze dried, chopped herbs, including red onions and garlic; they're simply incomparable to regular dried herbs and essentially obviate the need to buy (and plan ahead for) fresh herbs. Freeze drying preserves the volatile compounds that provide depth of flavor.