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The Dawn of the Robotic Chef (robohub.org)
pRobotika writes: When Moley announced its robotic kitchen back in April, the media jumped on the story as a promising glimpse into the future. But how realistic are robot chefs? Robotics' professionals are understandably skeptical but, if Moley manages to overcome one major issue, their approach could have real potential. Why? Because their kitchen is basically a flexible robotic workcell, and in manufacturing that's nothing new.
We have "robotic chefs" already, if you look at how industrialized the food production is. "Robotic chefs" are only some stupid phantasy from bad science fiction writers, as unrealistic like tacheons or the hoverboard. Industrialisation is just far less exciting than having a cool asian accent speaking robot chop some fish.
"Robotics' professionals are understandably skeptical" They forgot to ask professional chefs? They are probably even more skeptical.
TFA discusses that it is exactly that which is the biggest problem. The robot chef being discussed takes prepared ingredients and cooks them.
Preparation is skilled work. As you say, there's removing bad bits of the ingredients, recognising which parts are unpalatable or tough, dealing with a variety of shapes, peeling, cutting, skinning of meat, removal of cartilage and bone and fat and tendons, scraping out seeds and pulp - the list of skills and their variations is large, and depends on not just visual recognition but also on touch and smell and sound and even things as subtle as regulating how much force you are using based on how much resistance your tools are meeting. There is a reason that a professional kitchen has chefs who specialize in food prep for maximum efficiency.
There are plenty of tough problems there that can benefit the robotics industry if they are solved, but they are so much harder than the problems the existing "chef" solves, which are mere cooking and assembly. Even though it nominally solves these problems, I still wouldn't trust the thing to do something as simple as cook a steak properly, a process that requires experience, judgement, and touch.