7 Ways to UseRobots in The Food Industry

Robots have come a long way. People have been predicting that robots will be a massive part of our lives for decades. That prediction is finally starting to become a reality. We are starting to see robots everywhere, with new innovations arriving on a weekly basis.

The food industry is one industry where robots will have a profound impact. In many ways, they are already starting to do so. As such, here are 7 instances where robots are already being used in the food industry, from manufacturing all the way to front-end customer service.

Automated Kitchens

The robot is able to learn recipes and prepare entire meals on its own. Not only that, but it can also learn movements after witnessing a human chef and replicate recipes. Sadly, the robot has been in development for a while (since 2015). The release date is set for 2020, and our fingers are crossed!

Serving Beverages

The Rozum Café is a perfect ‘attraction’ for a restaurant. With no manual labor and no supervision required, the Rozum Café is ideal for mall food-courts and 24/7 stores as well. It will be interesting to see what other processes in the ‘food-serving’ domain are automated in the next few years. Perhaps, we could soon be enjoying a custom-made sandwich made entirely by a robot?

Handling of Delicate Fruits

Robots are now finally advanced enough for them to be able to pick fruits. Certain fruits such as strawberries must be handled with care so as to not ruin them. Grippers are finally becoming advanced enough so that they can venture out into a field and pick salads/fruits.

Sadly, the robots are not extremely durable as of yet. However, they are already functioning in real-world environments and they will only get better.

Food Packaging

Manual labor no longer has to perform tedious tasks hundreds of times a day. Instead, they can be trained to perform skilled roles that pay higher. The company also gets to save money as a smaller workforce is required at the lower level.

Butchering

Butchering animals has always been a very difficult and dangerous task for humans. It requires a lot of strength, which led to the use of sharp tools and machinery. However, using tools that can slice through meat so easily poses obvious dangers to the workers.

Automation was always a problem in the butchering industry due to each carcass being unique. While advanced processes have not been automated as of yet, there definitely have been many advancements.

Decorating Cakes

Decorating cakes is an art in itself! Many complicated cakes have taken the designers hours to complete, and it is a tedious process getting the details right.

The decorators are able to work with both warm as well as colder cakes. All you need to do is supply the robot with the appropriate materials, and it will do the rest.

Delivering Food

Robots can not only help prepare your food, but they can get it to you as well. While driverless cars will obviously be used for food delivery once viable, other robots are also in constant development.

Conclusion

One thing is for certain. We will not be serving the next culinary innovation on a plate. Instead, we are going to engineer it in a lab!