From the perspective of the development history of robots, "learning to cook" has always been a skill point that humans want it to master. The robot learning to cook has experienced continuous evolution and development from "thinking recipes" to "stirring hard dishes". From the Honeywell 316, a computer that mainly stored family recipes in 1969, IBM Watson, which only developed recipes and did not cook in 2014, or Spyce, which called itself "the world's first robot restaurant" and only mixed salads in 2018, until In 2019, a cooking robot named Cloi Chefbot, through the corresponding machine learning algorithm and motion control technology, enables Cloi to perform the same actions as the chef. After the customer puts the noodles and ingredients selected by themselves into the bowl, Cloi puts the ingredients in boiling water, puts them in a bowl after they are cooked, adds broth, and delivers them to the customer. In 2020, I believe that soon, robots that "can cook" and "know your stomach" will no longer be novel species, but will become the main force in the catering industry.

To foreigners, in addition to the tidal smell, the air in Guangdong also has a hint of delicious food.

The name "Food in Guangdong" is to a certain extent certified by all-round history: starting from Guangzhou in the commercial system in the middle and late Qing Dynasty, the Cantonese food culture, along with the pioneering spirit of Guangdong businessmen going north and south, has gradually become widely spread. The advancement of government culture and Chinese civilization has become a vivid "city card".

In the taste of life of Cantonese people, "knowledge of food" may be the most important indicator: first, there must be abundant ingredients, the so-called "the world's food, East Guangdong has everything; all the food in East Guangdong, the world may not have it"; second To cook well, the so-called "don’t hate fine food, never hate fine food"; third, we must pursue the perfection, pay attention to "no food from time to time, no fresh food, no fierce food, no strange food". Whether it is cheap neighborhood snacks or high-end restaurants, under such standards, they can all be treated equally.

There is the second half of "Food in Guangdong", which is called "Cook out of Fengcheng". "Fengcheng" is Shunde, which is close to Guangzhou and once rated as the "Food Capital of the World". Almost everyone in Shunde is a cook, and the pursuit of Cantonese taste has cultivated many excellent catering operators. Tourists from both inside and outside of Lingnan are mostly interested in the food tour of Shunde streets; all Cantonese restaurants all over the world are proud of hiring famous Shunde chefs.

Intelligent catering robot

In a city with such a gastronomic culture, the survival of the fittest in restaurants is extremely common. New stores often rack their brains, and it is difficult to get diners to stop. But in June of this year, a Chinese restaurant located in Beijiao, Shunde showed its "net celebrity" temperament before it opened. In the store of more than 2,000 square meters, there were no busy waiters, heavy menus and lively seafood. Stall. Approaching the rear kitchen area, there is no nervous chopping noise, noisy vegetable bells, and no annoying fumes and sweat in the kitchen. Except for the laughter of diners, the restaurant is very quiet.

The restaurant is still busy, but this time, every move in the restaurant can be seen by curious diners-taking side dishes, stir-frying, adding ingredients, platting, and serving drinks, all in one go. Dozens of simple meals, hot pot, claypot rice, noodles, burgers, drinks and desserts can be delivered to the table in a blink of an eye.

Chinese restaurant cloud trackChinese restaurant cloud track

Opening a fast and efficient restaurant may not be too difficult for hardworking Cantonese. But what if the chef in this restaurant called "Foodom Heavenly Kingdom" is not a local chef in Shunde, but more than 40 robots with their own strengths?

Knowledgeable gluttons will never be intimidated by this scene-no matter what the battle is, it is better to try it first.

"Digital" chef, authentic Cantonese flavor

The cooking of Chinese food has always been highly complicated, and the traditional mode of teacher-student teaching is prone to problems such as unstable quality and large differences in taste due to differences in people. For discerning Cantonese diners, dishes lacking "wok gas" and "smoky gas" are even more taboos in restaurants.

For example, in the category of claypot rice, Cantonese people prefer the method of cooking old casserole over an open flame, and the wonderful coking of rice created by manual cooking at the bottom of the pot. The claypot rice made with modern machines, tin foil bowls and black ceramic pots is jokingly called "digital claypot rice" and is by no means the first choice for diners.

However, the "digital clay pot rice" made by Foodom's robot chef is also crispy, properly seasoned, and extremely efficient. In the case of cooking 36 clay pots at the same time, 100-120 clay pot rice can be cooked in one hour. During the epidemic this year, it was also sent to Hubei to serve medical staff around the clock, which solved the problem that medical staff easily missed meals and could not eat hot meals.

Chinese restaurant wok robot

As for the Chinese cooking, Foodom’s robot chef had “apprented and learned skills” from the top ten local chefs in Shunde. The chefs have repeatedly adjusted hundreds of times from the perspectives of temperature and heat, taste feedback, amount of ingredients, cooking time, etc., and finally input standardized cooking technology into the robot computer, so that these "apprentices" can finally remember accurately The master’s skills can accurately restore more than dozens of Shunde’s famous dishes, such as raw fried fish skin corners, barbecued pork in the pot, and bean sprouts in chicken sauce, and will continue to introduce new dishes in the future.

For chefs who are accustomed to confronting young chefs with oral instruction, teaching robots to cook is a novelty. Ma Huiliang, Director of Dishes Research and Development of Qianxi Group and “Master of Chinese Cooking” in 2019, summarized his coaching work into two key words: “decomposition” and “repetition”: first decompose the cooking process of a dish into standard operation actions, The formula and time are applied to the robot's workflow; then, in cooperation with engineers, the robot will continue to practice combat until it reaches a stable critical point.

"After actual training, the robot is more efficient and stable than humans. As long as the program is set, it can work 24 hours a day. After all, humans have temperament and tiredness, but robots do not."

50 years, the evolutionary history of the repeatedly defeated "robot learning kitchen"

From the perspective of the development history of robots, "learning to cook" has always been a skill point that humans want it to master. But regardless of the cooking process in any country in the world, personalized parts are indispensable, as well as purely based on experience. Therefore, the robot learning to cook has undergone continuous evolution from "thinking recipes" to "stirring hard dishes". And development.

A. Honeywell 316, a computer that looks like a vegetable cutting table

A. Honeywell 316, a computer that looks like a vegetable cutting table. As early as 1969, Neiman-Marcus began to promote the first household kitchen computer, Honeywell 316. This computer, which sells for $10,600, looks like a red and white kitchen cutting table, but its main value is the large number of family recipes stored inside.

However, to use this machine at that time, it not only took a lot of time and energy, but also had to learn two weeks of computer programming.

B. IBM Watson using artificial intelligence to develop recipes

In 2014, Watson, a well-known artificial intelligence brand under IBM, cooperated with the food magazine Bon Appetit to launch a recipe application that uses artificial intelligence to match meals. Users can choose the ingredients and themes arbitrarily, and Watson will use algorithms to recombine different ingredients and seasonings to create new creative dishes as required. But the biggest problem with Watson is that it can only develop recipes, not cooking.

At the South by Southwest Conference in 2014, IBM dispatched a Watson gourmet train. The food inside was made according to Watson's recipes. One of the most well-received dishes that seemed confusing at first glance was "Vietnamese Apple Kebab", but the diners who tasted it on the spot gave it a good comment.

C. Spyce, which can mix salad, and Flippy, which doesn’t fry meatloaf

In 2018, Spyce, which claims to be "the world's first robot restaurant", opened in the United States. From ordering to cooking, serving dishes, and washing dishes, everything is done by robots. However, this restaurant leaves little room for diners to choose-only salads.

The restaurant offers 7 choices of hot salads. The ingredients are mixed and simply heated in a wok shaped like a drum washing machine. The cooking is completed in 3 minutes. In order to ensure the quality, the restaurant also invited the French Michelin-star restaurant chef Daniel Boulud to control the quality of the restaurant.

Also in 2018, Flippy, a robot frying hamburger patties in a fast food restaurant, was fired by his boss just a week after he was on duty. The reason was that his actions were too slow.

Flippy’s technology is actually not bad. It can judge the position of the patties, turn it over perfectly, and shovel the cooked patties off the stove and put them on the burger buns, but it can’t reach every point. The expected efficiency of roasting 200 patties per hour is not perfect with human chefs.

D. Cloi, a robot good at cooking noodles

In November 2019, South Korea’s LG Electronics and South Korea’s listed catering company CJ Foodville jointly developed a cooking robot called Cloi Chefbot that can make noodles for customers. After the customer puts the noodles and ingredients selected by himself into the bowl, Cloi will put the ingredients into the boiling water, put them into the bowl after being cooked, add the broth, and finally deliver it to the customer. The whole process only takes about 1 minute. .

Like young people who can make instant noodles, noodles may also be the easiest dish for catering robots to learn. Even so, LG's researchers have carried out a detailed study on the actions of human chefs. Through the corresponding machine learning algorithms and motion control technology, Cloi can make the same actions as a chef without breaking the dishes and making the wrong seasonings.

E. Qianxi robot proficient in Chinese food

On June 22, 2020, Country Garden’s Qianxi Robot Catering Group opened the first "Foodom Robot Restaurant" in Shunde, Guangdong. This is the world’s first robot restaurant complex with the most advanced technology and the most complete format, covering Chinese food, hot pot, fast food, clay pot rice, noodles, breakfast, burgers, drinks and many other catering categories. The entire restaurant can provide nearly 200 kinds of dishes, realizing the fastest meal in 20 seconds.

In the welcoming, cooking, and food delivery links, a total of nearly 40 robots are used in the restaurant, more than 20 types of equipment are independently developed, and 14 equipment has been iteratively upgraded. Among them, the second-generation claypot rice robot and mini ice cream robot were also awarded the first two CR certificates for system integration catering robots in China.

Claypot Robot

Recently, Zhiyuan Technology, a subsidiary of Qianxi Group, has jointly formulated and released the first technical specifications in the field of domestic food robots with the National Robot Inspection and Evaluation Center and other units. Through strong regulation and guidance of the application and development of robots in the food field, the smart transformation and high-quality development of China's catering industry will reach a new level.

Labor shortage or human touch, a realistic problem in the catering industry

Before knowing that robots can fry authentic Shunde dishes, Guangdong diners who love to try fresh may have heard of many similar "robot restaurant" brands, such as Alibaba's "Future Restaurant", Haidilao's "Smart Restaurant", And Jingdong’s "X Future Restaurant" and so on.

The concept of "smart catering" has attracted attention from all walks of life, mainly because it has great potential to reduce labor costs and improve operating efficiency. If applied to fast food, takeaway and other markets, it can effectively improve the problems of high labor costs and unstable product quality. .

The traditional catering industry is a labor-intensive industry, facing challenges such as gradual increase in labor costs, high turnover rate, and low management efficiency. According to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the rate of decrease in my country's working-age population will accelerate after 2020 and will remain at around 800 million by 2035. Poor work environment, heavy repetitive work, and unskilled jobs are increasingly difficult to attract young people.

The "2019 Annual Report on China's Catering Industry" released by the China Hotel Association also mentioned that the average turnover rate of most surveyed companies is 10%, and the proportion of labor costs including training and management to turnover is concentrated at 15%- Between 32%, it will continue to increase in the future. In contrast, the features of fully automated processes, all-weather operations, and fully intelligent system management provided by robots have significant advantages. In the post-epidemic era and the declining demographic dividend of China, this type of catering has undoubtedly become a blue ocean.

However, the Chinese have never treated "eating" as a business.

In terms of meal quality, diners may not be able to distinguish whether the food is cooked by a robot or an artificial chef, but many people care about whether the food itself is "sincere". This involves a lot of details of service links, and it also means that standardization of cooking is only the first step in the implementation of the concept of "future restaurant".

Take Haidilao as an example: In 2018, Haidilao opened a "smart restaurant" in Beijing, where a robotic arm selects the bottom of the pot and serves food, and uses an intelligent food delivery robot to transfer and pick up dishes. At the same time, referring to the experience of traditional stores, The bottom raw materials, ingredients and other parts provide personalized customization options.

After the opening of this restaurant, diners who had complained about Haidilao’s “personal service” loved the sense of intelligence and undisturbed feeling in the store, but more diners said they were “not used to Haidilao without noodle shows”. It can be seen that what Haidilao keeps diners lingering about is actually its thoughtful and warm manual service, not its standardized and replicable pot bottoms and dishes.

How to make robots and the restaurant of the future understand customers better and create greater value is a difficult problem for engineers.

At the beginning of the research and development of catering robots, Xiao Ran, deputy general manager of Qianxi Robotic Catering Group, also faced the question of whether the dishes made by robots have no soul. However, seeing the restaurant's operating performance steadily improve and its popularity continued to flourish, his doubts were naturally resolved. Some diners even reported to him that their children don’t like to eat at ordinary times, but in this restaurant where all exports are fresh machines, eating becomes particularly active.

Wok robot

"Our robots are not meant to replace people, but to improve service quality while solving the actual labor pressure in the catering industry. This time in the epidemic area, we can deliver steaming claypot rice to doctors and reporters; the future will be in scenic spots. If we use robots to eat meals, we can really bring benefits to the people. I believe our technology can make this society a better place."

Empowerment of the industrial chain from field to table

There is a famous local dish "Yu Sheng" in Shunde. In addition to the superb flavoring technique, what is more unforgettable is the extremely fresh and refreshing taste of fish sashimi. Behind this famous dish is Shunde's pride in the title of "Land of Fish and Rice" and the close collaboration of upstream and downstream of the industrial chain.

Reform and opening up have brought industrialization and urbanization to Shunde, as well as new ideas for the mulberry fish pond farming model that was once "all people are mulberry." Through standardized, intensive, and professional breeding methods, the famous and special aquatic product "raw grass carp" in Guangdong Province in Shunde has renewed its name and appeared on the tables of local diners in the freshest state. Today, the "Shunde Standard" has become a model for grass carp aquaculture in Guangdong Province.

The high-quality ingredients and cooking methods in the restaurant can jointly achieve an unforgettable gourmet journey. The prosperity of the catering industry and the tourism industry can further promote the modernization of upstream agriculture and form the linkage development of the entire industry chain from the field to the table.

For Qianxi Robot Catering Group, the investment in research and development of catering robots basically solves the needs of ordinary people to enjoy more delicious and stable quality meals in a shorter time. But for each restaurant, behind the high-tech robots, it is necessary to rely on a complete central kitchen and an upstream food supply system for smooth operation.

Food delivery robot

At present, the raw materials of Foodom Robot Restaurant rely on the consumer business of the Country Garden Group to purchase, which can ensure the stable and consistent quality of raw materials, and there will be no situations like "changing places to buy vegetables and the vegetables fried by robots will change taste". The coordinated central kitchen can also complete all the pre-treatment processes required for the restaurant's dish materials under highly automated conditions, and with the logistics system, it can cover the needs of restaurants within 100 kilometers to 200 kilometers.

After opening the flagship restaurant, Foodom Robot Restaurant has plans to expand in the three major urban agglomerations in the Pearl River Delta, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, and Yangtze River Delta. The implementation of the supporting central kitchen project is the first step. Among them, the largest central kitchen in the Pearl River Delta will have an area of 60,000 square meters, which can cover the entire Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Dr. Dai Xianglu, assistant general manager of Qianxi Robot Catering Group, said that in the future, this project can not only be used for external catering companies, as well as the canteens of enterprises and institutions, but also open to individual users. Ordinary people can order semi-finished dishes from the central kitchen. With household robots, it can serve millions of households.

"If in the future, the'famous chef' is no longer bound to the restaurant, but instead digitizes his craftsmanship and experience, the restaurant or individual can purchase the service, and then use artificial or robot services to present it. The power of technology can magnify the chef. Contributing to society and serving more people may be a good thing that will benefit the entire catering industry."