I titled this website “Robots Don’t Eat Food” because my Passion blog is about robots and my Civic Issues blog is mostly about food sustainability. For the most part, digestive robots do not have a use for society yet, so my blog title remains true. However, that does not mean that robots cannot make food.
Robot chefs are real, and these robot chefs are not like typical assembly line robots which each have one specific task. Moley, a U.K. tech company, makes a robot chef which consists of a pair of arms that can use all sorts of different utensils and cook 5,000 recipes by itself. There is really nothing that surprising about this robot. It’s designed to look like it has human arms and hands and its programmed to mix ingredients, turn on the stove, and perform other essential cooking tasks.
Moley is not the first group to build cooking robots. The French pizza chain Pazzi uses robots to make their pizza which makes sense because pizza is not that hard to make and follows a uniform structure. That’s just one example of countless other automation attempts. The “wow factor” of the Moley cooking robot is how quickly Moley wants it to be incorporated into the average home.
On their website they advertise the robot as something that allows people to “save time” and “free up their schedule.” While many of the most popular recipes online brand themselves as “fast” and “easy,” the robot will not save anyone from financial problems because even the cheapest Moley robot costs £150,000. This robot still has a long way to go before it will be able to live up to what its advertised as, but this robot could be more important than I initially gave it credit for.
The robot can use fresh ingredients and providing this to communities in need could help relieve some of the food-related problems we see today. America’s obesity problem can be at least partially attributed to fast food and processed foods that are popular because they are convenient. As these robots become more accessible, they could provide an alternative for people that don’t know how to make healthy meals or do not have the time. However, acquiring healthy (usually more expensive) ingredients can still be a challenge, but this could be a step in the right direction.
Typically, I associate automation with visions of the movie Wall-E where everyone becomes lazy and obese because they don’t need to do anything anymore, but despite the Moley robot’s large price tag, I think it could provide an intriguing solution to giving people the opportunity to eat healthier as it automated cooking becomes more commonplace in society.
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