Dishes and drinks such as garlic broccoli, peppery chicken nuggets, dried fried beef river, and cocktails can be tasted in the smart restaurant of the main media center of the Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. And all of this food is made by robots, and the smart restaurant has neither a chef nor a waiter.
How do diners order and dine? After scanning the QR code on the table to order, the meal will be transported to the corresponding table through the cloud rail system at the top of the restaurant, and then hover over the table with the lowered cable landing. Meals with soup water are delivered to diners via ground-level AGVs (Automated Guided Vehicles).
The larger the venue, the more efficient the cooking
Is the system of the "smart restaurant" of the Winter Olympics more efficient than that of real people? Why did you choose to apply this robot cooking system at the Winter Olympics?
Recently, the first financial reporter interviewed Yan Weixin, phD supervisor and associate researcher of the Institute of Robotics, School of Mechanical and Power Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He has been developing Chinese cooking robots for nearly 16 years, and has developed more than 60 catering service robots. Yan Weixin told the first financial reporter that the system of the "smart restaurant" of this Winter Olympics can be divided into the following parts: warehouse, cooking equipment, human-computer interaction, dine-in space, central kitchen and logistics. "For Chinese food, the way and method of cooking robots and manual cooking, the cycle time is the same, but the number of cooking stoves and the number of cooking single productions have increased." The original space left for people can be left for the stove, the original people are cooking in a flat surface, and now the machine can cook in the three-dimensional space, and the space utilization rate is high. There are more stoves, so the output is high. ”
However, the number of stoves will also be limited by certain factors. For example, factors such as the power load of the venue, the size of the dine-in area in the storefront, the number of customers, and the inventory of the backstage feeding system. ”
It is understood that the application of cooking robots in the media center of the Winter Olympics this time is because the venue is large enough, on the other hand, it can take this opportunity to display cooking robots to countries around the world, so that the world can understand the profoundness of Chinese food and the positive measures to deal with the new crown epidemic.
As for the cost of cooking robots? Yan Weixin said that with the continuous expansion of the business, a certain batch has been formed, and in the large-scale operation mode, the cost of the entire robot restaurant can meet the market demand, including the cost of equipment, operation and maintenance costs, logistics costs and the cost of the central kitchen.
Replicating the "turning the pot" action was once a difficult point
From the beginning of the development of cooking robots to the actual application, there will be a series of difficulties. It is understood that Chinese cooking is a kind of mentor-apprentice relationship that inherits the torch, and the first difficulty is how to digitally represent the more abstract behaviors in the cooking process. Second, the action of cooking, how the pot and pan interpret it in the language of the machine. Third, in the cooking process to make the material evenly heated the pan action, involving "big turn" and "small turn", this action is still quite difficult, how to throw the food up, turn over, and accurately return to the pot is more difficult to break through. Fourth, it is the fire control in the whole process. For the gas heating method, the fire control is related to the control of the material temperature, gas pressure, gas flow and other factors; for the electric heating method, it is closely related to the current intensity and other factors. In addition, how to protect the coating during the high-temperature cooking process and extend the life is another difficulty.
Of course, the cooking robot is not completely "cold", it will pour the chef's painstaking efforts into the research and development and design process, and the chef needs to guide and check, and different cuisines have different instructors. The instructor will guide from the process, raw material ratio, standardization of central kitchen ingredients and production control.
Yan Weixin began researching cooking robots when he entered the doctoral school in 2005. Until around 2007, cooking robots have been initially commercialized.
Yan Weixin told the first financial reporter that the original intention at that time was to think about commercialization, but mainly wanted to try the standardization of Chinese food, that is, after deconstructing the entire system of Chinese food, use machines to reproduce the works of master chefs. "Record the chef's cooking ingredients, on-stove movements and fire control, and then convert the standardized records into robot control programs to replicate and inherit the chef's cooking skills." He said.
At present, Yan Weixin's team has designed more than 60 catering service robots, which can be divided into cooking robots heated by different types of media such as water, steam, and oil.
However, it is worth mentioning that for the production of high-end dishes, cooking robots still need to go a long way. Yan Weixin believes that, first of all, it is difficult for high-end ingredients to be configured through the central kitchen, and it is difficult to scale up. Second, the cooking process of high-end ingredients is more complicated, the penetration rate is low, and it is difficult to achieve standardization. Third, the dining environment carrying high-end dishes pays more attention to the interactive service with a certain "temperature" between people, which is difficult for robots to achieve at this stage. The Media Center of the Winter Olympics mainly provides high-end group meals instead of high-end catering, and the cooking robots can reduce contact services during the epidemic prevention period, so it is very suitable.