Watch a robot make a prettier omelet than you can
From cracking eggs to scrambling to cooking, this robot has mastered the tricky art of omelets.
Engineers at the University of Cambridge trained a robot to make great-tasting omelets.
I struggle with making omelets. They come out as over-browned mutants. That's why I'm ready to welcome a robot cooking overlord into my kitchen to handle breakfast duties. I just need to go to the University of Cambridge in the UK and beg them to give me their robot.
University engineers worked with appliance company Beko to train a robot how to make an omelet, all the way from cracking the eggs to the actual cooking on a stove top. A video released on Monday lets you follow along with the process.
The researchers weren't just interested in the physical process; they developed a machine-learning technique to train the chef-bot to make omelets that would please human taste-testers.
"An omelet is one of those dishes that is easy to make, but difficult to make well," said University of Cambridge engineer Fumiya Iida in a release on Monday. "We thought it would be an ideal test to improve the abilities of a robot chef, and optimize for taste, texture, smell and appearance."
The team published its work in the journal IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters last month. The results from the study could be used to improve the skills and results for robotic chefs.
Engineers have been looking at ways to hand off cooking duties to robots for years. Samsung show off a Bot Chef that does "all the the boring parts" in 2019. A robotic pizza chef made pies at CES 2020.
Of course, the proof is in the final product. "The omelets, in general, tasted great – much better than expected!" said Iida.
