The Spoon
| It’s not just students heading back to college campuses this fall. Increasingly, tech companies are hooking up with universities to research and develop food-related robots. South Korean company Woowa Brothers, which operates the popular food delivery app Baedal Minjok, became the latest such company to do so yesterday when it announced that it was partnering with UCLA to research and develop food robots that do things like place orders and prepare meals. Woowa Brothers follows Nvidia, which opened up a robotic kitchen research lab near the University of Washington in January, led by Dieter Fox, a professor in the UW Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering; and Sony, which hooked up with Carnegie-Mellon University last year to work on food robots. That companies would lean on colleges shouldn’t come as a surprise; they’re filled with eager students and faculty working on cutting-edge technology in laboratory settings. That companies are interested in food isn’t a surprise either — I mean, everyone eats, so there are broad applications (that people will pay for). But equally important is that food provides an interesting challenge because it isn’t one uniform thing. Food comes in odd-shapes and sized objects of varying color and textures. Plus, there are a lot of different ways researchers can apply robotics research to food: In addition to identifying and moving objects, there is preparation like chopping and slicing, the actual cooking and plating of the food, and transporting a meal either inside a restaurant or across town to your door. Going back to school seems like a good thing for these companies. If they can get robots to successfully work with food, then robots will be better trained and prepared for applications outside the kitchen. |
Posted in Industry News
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