Google Tests AI Robotics in a Kitchen

Look forward to seeing this.  Kitchen has many tasks that could be automated, but usually not well positioned for broad application and integration.  Note here a number of hints at Google investment in the topic.  Ready to test.

Google Is Testing Its Latest AI-Powered Robot In a Kitchen  in ExtremeTech   By Adrianna Nine on August 17, 2022

Many robots are created to conduct highly-controlled jobs like frying potatoes, watering plants, or collecting litter. But a truly life-changing robot is one that can adapt to changing—and sometimes hectic—circumstances (ideally without losing its cool). That’s the line of thinking Google is following as it meshes its language-handling AI with a handy robot assistant.

Google’s Pathways Language Model (PaLM) is a relatively new 540-billion parameter network built to complete a variety of complex language-based tasks. It’s said to be intelligent enough to describe how it solved a math problem and annoy you by explaining your own jokes. Rather than focusing on one area of “expertise” and starting fresh every time it learns a new skill, PaLM can “stack” previously-learned knowledge to devise solutions to novel problems, similar to how humans assess new situations. This is important if a robot is meant to help humans in their jobs or day-to-day personal lives.

It just so happens that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has been working on a new robotics firm called Everyday Robots. As its name suggests, the firm’s goal is to build robots that learn on their own and take care of “time-consuming, everyday tasks.” Combined with PaLM, Everyday Robots’ SayCan robot becomes the PaLM-SayCan, a bot capable of assessing its own capabilities, its environment, and the task at hand, then breaking that task into smaller sub-tasks to achieve the desired goal. ... ' 

Google Coversational AI System and AI Test Kitchen

Test Kitchen is interesting. 

Google Debuts LaMDA 2 Conversational AI System and AI Test Kitchen   By Jaime Hampton in Datanami

At its annual developer conference last week, Google announced the second release of its conversational AI system, LaMDA, which stands for Language Models for Dialogue Applications. Google says LaMDa 2 is a more finely tuned version of their original release that uses open domain dialogue technology for conversation.

LaMDA is built on Google’s own Transformer neural network, an open source architecture that the company debuted in 2017. LaMDA was trained with dialogue (a dataset of 1.56 trillion words from public web data and documents, to be exact) to allow it to have what the company calls “natural, sensible and specific conversations.” It was then fine-tuned to generate natural language responses to given contexts and then classify its own responses according to whether they are safe and high quality. (More specific training information can be found in this developer blog post.)

Google CEO Sundar Pichai demonstrates LaMDA. With its “Imagine It” capability, users can input ideas and the AI will generate descriptive responses and even follow-up questions, as seen here.

During his keynote, Google CEO Sundar Pichai queued up pre-made demonstrations of LaMDA 2 that he said were not specific products but “quick sketches” to illustrate LaMDA’s capabilities. There is a creative function called “Imagine It,” where users can input their own ideas and the AI will generate imaginative and relevant descriptions of the idea. He shows LaMDA answering the prompt “Imagine I’m at the deepest part of the ocean” with “You’re in the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean! The waves are crashing against the walls of your submarine. You are surrounded by total darkness.” This description is followed by a list of follow-up questions generated by LaMDA, such as “What kind of creatures live here?” Ideas can be related to a straightforward topic (like the given example of the Mariana Trench), or a more abstract idea (such as how being on a planet made of ice cream might feel). Another function shown is called “Talk About It,” and this allows users to ask LaMDA 2 questions about a specific subject matter, after which it will stay on-topic, no matter which follow-up questions are asked.

Perhaps the most interesting capability, “List It,” was demonstrated live, this time by Senior Director of Product Management Josh Woodward, who said: “List It explores whether LaMDA can take a complex goal or topic and break it down into relevant subtasks. It can help me figure out what I’m trying to do and generate useful ideas I might not have thought of.”

Woodward tells LaMDA he wants to plant a vegetable garden, and it instantly provides him with a detailed list of subtasks, including “Make a list of what to grow” and “Research what grows best in your area.” Each suggested subtask can be broken down into a list of more suggestions specific to the task. LaMDA can also generate tips, such as trying container growing if yard space is a concern. .... ' 

Chefs Using AI

 We looked at some early work done by IBM using Watson in this area.  May have mentioned it here.

AI: Why chefs are turning to artificial intelligence  By Michael Dempsey  in the BBC

Technology of Business reporter

Nicolas Maire is the model of a professional French chef with years of experience and 18 Michelin stars under his belt, a man who dominates his kitchen dispensing nuggets of culinary wisdom as he prepares food for his guests.'  Today, this kitchen is buried inside a sprawling corporate HQ on the outskirts of Geneva. Mr Maire works for Firmenich, a business with a perfume industry pedigree stretching back to 1895.

Firmenich's nose for a new market saw it diversify into food ingredients as the public appetite for alternatives to meat led to a scramble to put plant-based food on supermarket shelves.  The company says there is a global market for plant-based meat substitutes of $25bn (£19bn) and believes this will grow to $200bn by 2030.

To help perfect the flavours of these innovative foods, Mr Maire has a new sous-chef in the form of Sam, an artificial intelligence (AI) robot.  

A Fast Food Robotic Kitchen

Towards robotic cookery.

Kitchen robot in Riga cooks up new future for fast food  by Imants Liepins  in TechxPlore

A pasta order comes in and the robotic arm springs into action at the Roboeatz eatery in Riga. After five minutes of gyrations, a piping hot plate is ready. The Riga cafe, located under a crumbling concrete bridge, is designed in such a way that customers can observe the robotic arm at work.

It also has a seating area, although most customers prefer take away since vaccination certificates are required to be able to eat indoors in Latvia.

A Roboeatz app allows customers to order and pay for their dish before picking it up at the cafe."The food tasted better than I expected!" said customer Iveta Ratinika, a teacher and a member of the Latvian capital's education board.

Ratinika said she would encourage schoolchildren to come and observe the robotic arm in action and mused that there could be robots working at the school cafeteria within "a few years".

Kitchen design is 'real challenge'

Roboeatz was set up in January 2018 by Konstantins Korcjomkins and Janis Poruks, who have been running the Woki Toki fast food chain in Latvia since 2009.Their aim? To revolutionize the fast food industry. "This robot replaces four to six human employees, reducing labor costs significantly," said Poruks, who has a background in engineering.   ... '

Future of the Kitchen

 Our own innovation centers had 'kitchens of the future' to demonstrate product use and appliance integration.    Consumer behavior in context.      We invited companies to provide future scenarios.   This was in the first flurry of smartphone usage.  Good piece here. 

The Future of Kitchen Design Is Hands-Free, Smartphone-Activated

The Wall Street Journal  J.S. Marcus

Kitchen appliance designers and manufacturers increasingly rely on technological advances, using cameras, sensors, artificial intelligence, and novel materials to modernize the kitchen. Appliance maker Miele's G7000 dishwashers are equipped with sensors that prompt owners' smartphones to reorder detergent when running low, while rival Bosch's dishwashers are made with a Zeolite mineral compound that helps plastic items dry more efficiently. Bosch also has integrated refrigerator cameras with its new cloud-accessing system, so they can suggest recipes based on ingredients currently stocked. The Covid-19 pandemic also is reshaping homeowners' kitchen expectations, with touchless features and sanitization increasingly desired.

NVIDIA Test Robotic Kitchen

In our kitchen lab we also thought the kitchen was a key challenge for robotics, information exchange  and assistance.

This Ikea kitchen is incubating the robots of the future

At Nvidia’s new robot lab in Seattle, UW professor Dieter Fox is betting that a run-of-the-mill Ikea kitchen is the perfect test bed for his next-gen robots.   By Katherine Schwabs in Fastcompany

This week, the computer chip company Nvidia opened a new robotics lab in Seattle. The lab has a lot of what you might expect–loads of electronics and robotic parts, work spaces, and computers everywhere–but the centerpiece is a bit unorthodox: It’s an Ikea kitchen.

That’s because University of Washington robotics professor Dieter Fox, who is on leave from the university to head up this Nvidia lab, believes that the kitchen is the perfect test-bed for the robots of the future.  .... " 

Alexa Controlling Ovens

Not unexpected, but another reach into smart home control.  Assuming this will require appliance design change rather than after market controls.  Note Samsung is mentioned, which implies it will buy into the Alexa commands, perhaps adding to its own Bixby assistant approach?   I would not put controlling an oven high on my automation list,  despite being a frequent cook, but shows the further acceptance of the idea by manufacturers as a differentiating feature.

Alexa will soon be able to control ovens and microwaves
By Jacob Kastrenakes in The Verge.

If you own a smart microwave or oven, you might soon be able to control it with Alexa. Amazon announced today that it’s adding microwave and oven control features to its smart assistant, allowing it to handle requests like “Alexa, microwave for 50 seconds on high.” Amazon says that support for other cooking appliances will be added later.  .... " 

Report from the Smart Kitchen Summit

Used to attend these kinds of meetings,  to feed our own innovation center experiments, always had to separate the reasonable from the outlandish.  In say a decade long frame.  I am a cook from way back so I do appreciate what is useful and is not.  Even for volume or time stressed situations.   Good piece, with useful links, note the considerable number of Alexa enabled appliances, but how to make voice control a generally useful capability will be a creativity challenge.

Your Future Kitchen has a Smart Oven, a Burger flipping bot, and 36 Bacon Programs   By Jenny McGrath from DigitalTrend.

Last year, we predicted some of the changes that we’d see in cooking over the next decade, including precision cookware. The Smart Kitchen Summit, which was held this week in Seattle, brings together device makers, chefs, and other experts to discuss the future of food. And based on some of the items that were featured at the annual event, we may be able to get precisely cooked, hyper personalized dishes from our ovens sooner than we thought.

Major appliance brands such as Kenmore and Whirlpool are on board with embracing the smart kitchen. Both announced Alexa-enabled appliances, including fridges, dishwashers, and ranges earlier this year. There aren’t a ton of ways for Alexa and these appliances to interact yet, but manufacturers see including smart technology as a way to continuously add new features to old machines. But even people who swear they’ll never talk to their oven will see a benefit.... "

The Smart Home Moves Slowly

Daniel Cooper looks at appliances in the smart home.  We can dole out music and light relatively easily as on demand and intelligent information activity.  I have a dozen such devices in my home. But the Washers, Dryers, Frigs, Oven, Ironing Boards, Food prep stations, Bars and related task orientations are are still hard to do robotically.  And even those that make a valiant attempt in doing their job by managing the information required, are still very expensive.  And because they are expensive, they are replaced at decade long cycles.   It does not seemed to have changed much since the days of our smart home labs.  Good thoughts below.

The smart kitchen revolution is a slow one

Changes are coming.

Daniel Cooper, @danielwcooper in Engadget .... 

He reports from IFA 2017 in Berlin

Do Smart Speakers Need a Screen?

The rash of smart speakers and voice drive smart home control systems continues.    But using them with advanced features, like recipe systems,  or searches that could be augmented with pictures or diagrams, seem to beg for an integrated screen.   But does this just make them another dedicated kitchen laptop?  We have seen a number of such specialized counter devices come and go, tested several in the lab. None survived. Or should they be retained with the simplicity of just voice?  Perhaps with a way to easily cast screens?   Discussed in Retailwire, prompted by a rumor that a premium version of the Amazon Echo will include a screen.