Imagine a world where Ferran Adriá (the chef behind now-defunct all-world Barcelona eatery El Bulli) cooks all your meals.
Well, his hands, anyway. His disembodied, robotic hands.
Possibly creepy, possibly delicious — but weirdest of all, possible. U.K. tech firm Moley Robotics has created a system in which “robo hands” will prepare your meals using a potentially limitless number of recipes. With the help of motion-capture technology, the robot hands copy a chef’s movements, from adding sugar to sautéeing vegetables to doing the complicated stovetop maneuvers you never totally picked up.
Robo chef in the kitchen4:14
In a video demonstration, “Masterchef” U.K. winner Tim Anderson was filmed preparing a meal while wearing “cyber gloves”; the robotic hands then duplicated his movements. That means, of course, that any meal preparation could be captured and handed over to the robots, whether it’s a seven-course tasting menu from a Michelin-starred chef or your grandma’s meatballs and lingonberries. Watch the video — seriously, it’s beautiful and nauseating at the same time. Humans, the kitchen singularity has arrived.
For those less concerned about the philosophical ramifications of farming out meal prep to Skynet, Moley Robotics aims to have the product on the market by 2017 — but it won’t come cheap. Expect it to hit the market at around $75,000.
Image credit: Moley Robotics
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