Follow !

" # Subscribe $ %

Your source for the latest research news New: Extreme Heat Wave: 2021 Western North A…
ADVERTISEMENT Wingless Small Reptile Gave Rise to Pterosa…
Restoring Hearing After Hearing Loss
Climate Change:Follow all ofthe
Sparking ScienceDaily's
Next Pandemic
Neural Pathway:latest research
Sensation news and
of Pleasant Touch
top Seawater
Desalination: From science headlines!
to Drinking Water
Plate Tectonics: 3.8-Billion-Year-Old Crystal
Prehistoric People Created Art by Firelight
Only 10 Vaquita Porpoises: Can They Survive?
SD Health Tech Enviro Society Quirky Search *
Lunar Soil Could Provide for Oxygen and Fuel

Science News from research organizations ' Print ( Email ) Share

ADVERTISEMENT

Taste of the future: Robot chef learns to 'taste as you go'

Date: May 4, 2022

Source: University of Cambridge

Summary: A robot 'chef' has been trained to taste food at different stages of the chewing process
to assess whether it's sufficiently seasoned.

Share: a b e g d

RELATED TOPICS FULL STORY

Plants & Animals

A robot 'chef' has been trained to taste food at differ‐
∠ Organic ent stages of the chewing process to assess whether
∠ Food it's sufficiently seasoned.
∠ Food and Agriculture Working in collaboration with domestic appliances manufacturer
Beko, researchers from the University of Cambridge trained their
Matter & Energy
robot chef to assess the saltiness of a dish at different stages of
∠ Robotics Research the chewing process, imitating a similar process in humans.

∠ Engineering Their results could be useful in the development of automated or

semi-automated food preparation by helping robots to learn what
∠ Engineering and Construc‐ tastes good and what doesn't, making them better cooks.
tion
When we chew our food, we notice a change in texture and taste.
Computers & Math For example, biting into a fresh tomato at the height of summer
will release juices, and as we chew, releasing both saliva and di‐
∠ Robotics gestive enzymes, our perception of the tomato's flavour will
∠ Artificial Intelligence change.

∠ Neural Interfaces The robot chef, which has already been trained to make omelettes
based on human taster's feedback, tasted nine different variations Most Popular this week
of a simple dish of scrambled eggs and tomatoes at three differ‐
ADVERTISEMENT ent stages of the chewing process, and produced 'taste maps' of
SPACE & TIME
the different dishes.
Neptune Is Cooler Than We Thought: Study
The researchers found that this 'taste as you go' approach signifi‐ Reveals Unexpected Changes in Atmospheric
cantly improved the robot's ability to quickly and accurately as‐ Temperatures
sess the saltiness of the dish over other electronic tasting tech‐
Explanation for Formation of Abundant
nologies, which only test a single homogenised sample. The re‐ Features on Europa Bodes Well for Search for
sults are reported in the journal Frontiers in Robotics & AI. Extraterrestrial Life

The perception of taste is a complex process in humans that has Lunar Soil Has the Potential to Generate
Oxygen and Fuel
evolved over millions of years: the appearance, smell, texture and
temperature of food all affect how we perceive taste; the saliva MATTER & ENERGY
produced during chewing helps carry chemical compounds in
From Seawater to Drinking Water, With the
food to taste receptors mostly on the tongue; and the signals from Push of a Button
taste receptors are passed to the brain. Once our brains are
aware of the flavour, we decide whether we enjoy the food or not. It Takes Three to Tangle: Long-Range Quantum
Entanglement Needs Three-Way Interaction
Taste is also highly individual: some people love spicy food, while
A New Era of Mitochondrial Genome Editing
others have a sweet tooth. A good cook, whether amateur or pro‐ Has Begun
fessional, relies on their sense of taste, and can balance the vari‐
ous flavours within a dish to make a well-rounded final product. COMPUTERS & MATH

Bye, Bye, Biopsy? Handheld Device Could

"Most home cooks will be familiar with the concept of tasting as Painlessly Identify Skin Cancers
you go -- checking a dish throughout the cooking process to
check whether the balance of flavours is right," said Grzegorz Powerful Family of Two-Dimensional Materials
Discovered
Sochacki from Cambridge's Department of Engineering, the pa‐
per's first author. "If robots are to be used for certain aspects of Taste of the Future: Robot Chef Learns to
food preparation, it's important that they are able to 'taste' what 'Taste as You Go'
they're cooking." ADVERTISEMENT

"When we taste, the process of chewing also provides continuous

feedback to our brains," said co-author Dr Arsen Abdulali, also
from the Department of Engineering. "Current methods of elec‐
tronic testing only take a single snapshot from a homogenised
sample, so we wanted to replicate a more realistic process of
chewing and tasting in a robotic system, which should result in a
RELATED TERMS tastier end product."

The researchers are members of Cambridge's Bio-Inspired

∠ Tongue
Robotics Laboratory run by Professor Fumiya Iida of the Depart‐
∠ Robot calibration ment of Engineering, which focuses on training robots to carry out
the so-called last metre problems which humans find easy, but
∠ Industrial robot
robots find difficult. Cooking is one of these tasks: earlier tests
∠ Android with their robot 'chef' have produced a passable omelette using
feedback from human tasters.
∠ Humanoid robot
"We needed something cheap, small and fast to add to our robot
∠ Computer vision
so it could do the tasting: it needed to be cheap enough to use in
∠ Truffle a kitchen, small enough for a robot, and fast enough to use while
cooking," said Sochacki.
∠ Robot
To imitate the human process of chewing and tasting in their robot
chef, the researchers attached a conductance probe, which acts
as a salinity sensor, to a robot arm. They prepared scrambled
eggs and tomatoes, varying the number of tomatoes and the
amount of salt in each dish.

Using the probe, the robot 'tasted' the dishes in a grid-like fash‐
ion, returning a reading in just a few seconds.

To imitate the change in texture caused by chewing, the team

then put the egg mixture in a blender and had the robot test the
dish again. The different readings at different points of 'chewing'
produced taste maps of each dish.

Their results showed a significant improvement in the ability of Strange & Offbeat
robots to assess saltiness over other electronic tasting methods,
which are often time-consuming and only provide a single read‐ SPACE & TIME
ing.
In a Pair of Merging Supermassive Black Holes,
While their technique is a proof of concept, the researchers say a New Method for Measuring the Void
that by imitating the human processes of chewing and tasting, Hubble Reveals Surviving Companion Star in
robots will eventually be able to produce food that humans will Aftermath of Supernova
enjoy and could be tweaked according to individual tastes.
Lunar Soil Has the Potential to Generate
"When a robot is learning how to cook, like any other cook, it Oxygen and Fuel
needs indications of how well it did," said Abdulali. "We want the MATTER & ENERGY
robots to understand the concept of taste, which will make them
Self-Propelled, Endlessly Programmable
better cooks. In our experiment, the robot can 'see' the difference Artificial Cilia
in the food as it's chewed, which improves its ability to taste."
Scientists Observe Quantum Speed-Up in
"Beko has a vision to bring robots to the home environment which Optimization Problems
are safe and easy to use," said Dr Muhammad W. Chughtai, Se‐
Rapid Adaptation of Deep Learning Teaches
nior Scientist at Beko plc. "We believe that the development of Drones to Survive Any Weather
robotic chefs will play a major role in busy households and assist‐
ed living homes in the future. This result is a leap forward in ro‐ COMPUTERS & MATH
botic cooking, and by using machine and deep learning algo‐ The Quest for an Ideal Quantum Bit
rithms, mastication will help robot chefs adjust taste for different
dishes and users." Taste of the Future: Robot Chef Learns to
'Taste as You Go'
In future, the researchers are looking to improve the robot chef so
Self-Assembled Logic Circuits Created from
it can taste different types of food and improve sensing capabili‐ Proteins
ties so it can taste sweet or oily food, for example.

The research was supported in part by Beko plc and the Engi‐
neering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Fumiya Iida is a Fellow of
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Cambridge. The original text

of this story is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.

Related Multimedia:

YouTube video: Taste of the future: robot chef learns to

'taste as you go'

Journal Reference:

1. Grzegorz Sochacki, Arsen Abdulali, Fumiya Iida. Mastication-

Enhanced Taste-Based Classification of Multi-Ingredient
Dishes for Robotic Cooking. Frontiers in Robotics and AI,
2022; 9 DOI: 10.3389/frobt.2022.886074

Cite This Page:

MLA APA Chicago

University of Cambridge. "Taste of the future: Robot chef learns to

'taste as you go'." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 4 May 2022.
<www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/05/220504082625.htm>.

Featured Content from New Scientist

Watch a swarm of drones navigate a forest without crashing

May 4, 2022 — A new navigation system for drones reduces the processing power needed to avoid
obstacles, even in tricky environments like forests.

The US has a new plan to help tackle criminals using drones

April 29, 2022 — Current legislation prevents local law enforcement in the US from shooting down or
interfering with criminal drones.

Meta is using AI to create low-carbon concrete for its data centres

April 27, 2022 — Meta has used AI to develop concrete that emits 40 per cent less carbon, but re‐
searchers say that other concrete mixtures can already achieve that.

Visit New Scientist for more global science stories >>>

Explore More from ScienceDaily

ADVERTISEMENT

RELATED STORIES

Chewing to Stay Slim: How to Savor Your Food Better and Dodge
Weight Gain
Jan. 12, 2022 — Chewing well helps in digestion. Chewing is also known
to help prevent obesity, possibly by increasing the thermic effect of food
consumption. But the factors behind this heat-generating effect of ...

Robot Jaws Shows Medicated Chewing Gum Could Be the Future

July 14, 2020 — Medicated chewing gum has been recognized as a new
advanced drug delivery method but currently there is no gold standard for
testing drug release from chewing gum in vitro. New research has shown a
...

A Good Egg: Robot Chef Trained to Make Omelettes

June 1, 2020 — A team of engineers have trained a robot to prepare an
omelette, all the way from cracking the eggs to plating the finished dish,
and refined the 'chef's' culinary skills to produce a reliable dish ...

What Makes the Deadly Pufferfish So Delectable

Jan. 23, 2019 — Some people consider pufferfish, also known as fugu, a
delicacy because of its unique and exquisite flavor, which is perhaps
seasoned by knowledge that consumption of the fish could be deadly.
Now, ...

Free Subscriptions Follow Us Have Feedback?

Get the latest science news with ScienceDaily's Keep up to date with the latest news from Tell us what you think of ScienceDaily -- we
free email newsletters, updated daily and ScienceDaily via social networks: welcome both positive and negative comments.
weekly. Or view hourly updated newsfeeds in Have any problems using the site? Questions?
your RSS reader: ! Facebook
+ Leave Feedback
" Twitter
( Email Newsletters
, Contact Us
# LinkedIn
$ RSS Feeds

About This Site | Staff | Reviews | Contribute | Advertise | Privacy Policy | Editorial Policy | Terms of Use

Copyright 1995-2022 ScienceDaily or by other parties, where indicated. All rights controlled by their respective owners.
Content on this website is for information only. It is not intended to provide medical or other professional advice.
Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily, its staff, its contributors, or its partners.
Financial support for ScienceDaily comes from advertisements and referral programs, where indicated.