The Bengaluru-based ‘Mechanical Chef’, as the name suggests, is a robot. A tabletop machine that can cook a variety of dishes once basic ingredients are fed into it, uses a giant funnel. Drop anything, from oil and vegetables, to spices and water, in pre-calibrated quantities and a spatula shall mix them gently. The commands will be given from a laptop.
This is the wonder of this machine.
Cohan Sujay Carlos (in his 40s), and Arpit Sharma (30), developed this in a year, after going through hundreds of algorithms and machine drawings, spending lakhs of rupees in R&D, a Rs 5 lakh grant, and many food trials. Cohan is a former machine learning researcher at Microsoft, and Arpit is an aerospace engineer who has worked on the moon rover at TeamIndus.
As reported by the Bangalore Mirror, this wonder robot can make Upma, Bisi Bele Bath, Tomato Rasam, Chole Masala, Matar Paneer, Dal Tadka and everything in between.
Boiling, stir-frying and tempering-this machine does it all. Only deep-frying, grinding and pressure-cooking aren’t covered, yet. But Sharma promises that once it is fully developed, come next year, it will make up to 150 Indian recipes.
Around 25 people have been invited to try these machine-made meals, over the last six weeks. Last November, this prototype had made Potato Fry, in front of 200 people at a fair in the city. Sharma recalls that a housewife fell in love with the robot.
Sharma claims their robot can make Indian meals, which are more complex than other cuisines, and will cost Rs 25,000.
This idea struck Carlos in 2012 when a female colleague spoke of how cooking took hours from her daily time. It was only when Sharma came onboard in 2017, that the mechanical glitches were fixed.
Sharma hopes to target homemakers, working women, bachelors and anyone who has complained that cooking was taking too much time, or of outside food being of poor quality. The bot currently has 30 tested pre-loaded recipes, and once the final revisions are made, Mechanical Chef will be connected to your home’s Wi-Fi connection.
The product is being refined into better versions which will include voice commands and the ability to store spices. It will have a microwave-like setup, and you will be able to load your recipes too.
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Sharma rounds off by saying that until now the priority has been to make tasty Indian food. The next steps will see the Bengaluru Mechanical Chef becoming smarter. We are sure that this machine will ease the burden of cooking off many hands!
Edited by: Shruti Singhal.
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