Robot chef trained to develop a taste for seasoning

Working in collaboration with Beko, researchers from Cambridge University trained their robot chef to assess the saltiness of a dish at different stages of the chewing process, imitating a similar process in humans.

The texture and taste of food changes when it is chewed. The robot chef, already trained to make omelettes based on human taster’s feedback, tasted nine different variations of scrambled eggs and tomatoes at three different stages of the chewing process, and produced ‘taste maps’ of the different dishes.

The researchers found that this approach significantly improved the robot’s ability to quickly and accurately assess the saltiness of the dish over other electronic tasting technologies, which test a single homogenised sample. The team’s results are reported in Frontiers in Robotics & AI.

Related content

Robot chef prepares and cooks acceptable omelettes

“Most home cooks will be familiar with the concept of tasting as you go – checking a dish throughout the cooking process to check whether the balance of flavours is right,” said first author Grzegorz Sochacki from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “If robots are to be used for certain aspects of food preparation, it’s important that they are able to ‘taste’ what they’re cooking.”