A Cooking Machine - Research & Design

Some Initial Thoughts:

Have you ever felt that you are wasting your time cooking every day when you are loaded with coursework? Have you ever felt that you may need… say, robots, to help you cook so that you can save your time to focus on what’s more important? I certainly do. On one hand, I think that cooking can be very grounding and that it help relax our nervous energy, but I’ve always wondered, since we’ve already invented all kinds of cooking aids why haven’t cooking robots taken off to help us cook? On average, I cook an hour a day, which is a time commitment that can add up. If I wanted to use this time more "productively" to say, write a book, work on a project, or spend time with family and friends, a cooking machine might just be the thing that I need.

I’ve always had an unbalanced relationship with food, especially during semesters where I am facing constant pressure from my coursework and peers. In response, I often choose to cook or order high calorie non-nutritious food as a way to deal with all the stress. However, if I am provided with healthier options before reaching for unhealthy food, I have no problem eating that instead. My interest in the robot or cooking machine has stemmed from this personal revelation: if food was readily available, it would be much easier to make healthy choices. I began thinking about how this might be designed.  

In the upcoming posts, I plan on describing my process of inventing my own cooking machine/robot. I am ambitious and hope to create something that can cook delicious Chinese food with minimal effort. Hopefully after reading this post, you are inspired to think about your own cooking robot/machine as well. 

Research:

Let’s start with the research and initial design. 

I began my search with a few keyword searches for, “general kitchen robot/machine” on YouTube and Amazon, just to see what was out there. I found that there were all kinds of cooking machines, most of which serve a specific purpose, such as cutting a vegetable, boiling an egg or making a waffle. None were categorized by food preference type (vegan, vegetarian, etc) and none were specific to certain cultural food traditions. I realized if I wanted to cook my desired Chinese dish, I would need to spend a lot of money buying many different tools. I also realized that I would need to first choose one of two problems to solve: either pre-preparing raw ingredients, or cooking the pre-prepared ingredients. To start off, I chose to think about how to cook pre-prepared ingredients. For now, I’ll consider the use of conventional tools for cutting and preparing.   

I asked myself the following questions: what should I do if I want to cook Chinese food with prepared ingredients? One of the most common cooking techniques in making Chinese food is stirring the food under controlled temperatures. I continued my online search typing “kitchen stirring machines”  and found a couple of the best-selling stirring gadgets, which range from around $20 to $200 dollars.The cheapest ones are made of plastic and aren’t powerful enough to stir food with a consistency thicker than soup; the ones in the middle price range are more powerful, but don’t have a lot of control over stirring speed and they are limited to specific pot sizes; the more expensive ones are the most powerful and are applicable to much heavier and thicker ingredients, but they still only have limited stirring control and aren’t technically smart devices [i]. A smart cooking machine, I think, should guide me through the cooking process or keep me away from the kitchen as much as possible, so simply stirring food is not enough. In fact, in my own design, I plan to add more smart control system features so that the robot can remind me when to add the next ingredient; this way I can multitask while cooking. I realized I could add in a smart timer and alarm system, which can be set up by users (me) to record the time and sequence for each ingredient. When the alarm goes off, this smart system can remind me which ingredients to put in next. I can imagine the instructions might be displayed on an LCD screen attached to the cooking machine. Another option is for the cooking machine to simply speak to me using a voice assistant. This machine might also be controlled by a phone app so that users can turn off the alarm easily or control the stirring motion settings from far away. 

I then wondered, what if I also wanted to control the heating temperature? This would require an all-in-one machine to stir and cook food with a closed lid. During my research, I found a machine designed and manufactured in China with this capability; in the demo, this machine was able to cook fried rice with ease by controlling both the temperature and stirring settings [ii]. However, it’s still not as smart as the one I am imagining since the user cannot pre-set any type of cooking dishes. In my own project, I realized if I add in the customized dish pre-set feature, I would be able to control most of the cooking process, except of course, the “adding ingredients” part.

Initial Design:

After looking deeper into how to cook customized Chinese food with robots/machines, I outlined a plan for my first prototype: Design 1, shown below. This design will be modified as I try out different materials and electronics, or as I decide on a dish to test. I plan on starting with a simple stirring function. Then, I will add the additional stirring control, smart alarm system, temperature control and customized dish instruction pre-set features. 

The next step is to decide what materials to use (silicone or stainless steel, and definitely not plastic for health reasons) and what demo dish to cook. Although my priority is to cook Chinese food, I hope this cooking machine can be used for many other dishes with similar cooking processes that I’ve enjoyed lately such as certain vegan nourish bowls and soups.

I am looking forward to starting the “make” process of my cooking machine soon and to sharing the rest of my journey!   

Smart Cooking Machine - Design 1

Design 1 focuses on the stirring motion control and its motion livestream. It contains 3 main parts: 1) ESP32 microcontroller is connected to stirrer 2) RPI is connected to web-cam. Data is transmitted between ESP32 and RPI through wireless communication - UDP protocol. 3) Web client (PC / smart phone) that can livestream video, turn on/off the stirrer motion and adjust stirrer’s speed. Data is transmitted between the server and client through socket.io protocol.

[i] “Automatic Pot Stirrer: 5 Best Automatic Pot Stirrers in 2021”, SmartTechZone, published on December 28, 2020, Youtube video, 7:37, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdV2XE9jk8U

[ii] “Smart Kitchen Items Utilities For Every Home #3” Smart Life, published on May 7, 2020, YouTube video, 01:35, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r65p4SGO_mk