Robotic Kitchen Assistants

If you spent Thanksgiving slaving over a hot stove, you might be glad to know that researchers are developing some robotic kitchen assistants that could someday do the hard work for you.

Here is a roundup of robots designed to help humans with food preparation. No turkey-prepping robots (yet), but these bots can prepare sushi, pancakes, even ramen noodles.

At this year’s FOOMA International Food Machinery and Technology Exhibition in Tokyo, a “sushi robot” showed off its food-handling skills, gently grasping raw fish without squishing it. The robot is essentially an industrial robotic arm with a silicone hand attached to the end.

At the same conference, a Japanese-pancake-flipping robot with voice-recognition was able to take orders and use its 15 joints brush oil, knead dough, add spices, flip the pancakes and serve them.

In a noodle restaurant in Japan, a robotic chef can prepare and serve 80 bowls of ramen noodles on a busy day.

This robotic system stacks 400 pancakes per minute.