Planning for algae as Food

World Population and how to feed it  ... 

Green eats the future

Feeding the world

Without algae there would be no life on earth. Every second molecule of oxygen that we breathe comes from them. Algae could also become more important as food in the future. Fraunhofer researchers are working on professional cultivation and the extraction of numerous proteins and other nutrients.

Web special Fraunhofer magazine 3.2022

The United Nations calculated that the eight billionth person was born on November 15th. The world population has doubled in just 50 years. Even if the growth has now slowed down significantly: 8.5 billion people are forecast for 2030 and 9.7 billion for 2050. More people means: less farmland, less drinking water and less food per capita. The climate crisis means that the shortage situation is getting worse. Due to desertification, i.e. the deterioration of the soil to the point of desertification, arable land the size of Bavaria is lost worldwide every year. Already a third of the fertile soil has become unusable in the past 40 years - a result of the overexploitation as arable land and pasture. The German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) estimates that around 70 percent more food will be needed by 2050 than today. Aquatic organisms, which quite wrongly still lead a niche existence, especially in the European food industry, could help: algae. Algae contain as much protein as soy, plenty of valuable fiber and minerals, and vitamin B12, which is otherwise only found in animal products. 

The superfood needs neither fresh water nor land. It grows sustainably in the sea or is cultivated as a unicellular microalgae in mostly closed systems. Algae contain as much protein as soy, plenty of valuable fiber and minerals, and vitamin B12, which is otherwise only found in animal products. The superfood needs neither fresh water nor land. It grows sustainably in the sea or is cultivated as a unicellular microalgae in mostly closed systems. Algae contain as much protein as soy, plenty of valuable fiber and minerals, and vitamin B12, which is otherwise only found in animal products. The superfood needs neither fresh water nor land. It grows sustainably in the sea or is cultivated as a unicellular microalgae in mostly closed systems.   .... ' 

Edible Drones

Narrow and novel  application here.

ACM NEWS

Stranded Without Food? Edible Drone Has Snackable Wings  By CNET, November 17, 2022

The wings of this drone are nutritious and, depending on what you think about rice cakes, delicious.

The drone's design uses some familiar-looking airplane-like components; the big difference is that its fixed wing is made from rice cakes and gelatin.

It's a nightmare scenario. You're on an ambitious mountain hike when you get lost, injured or stranded. The good news is help is finally on the way, but the bad news is it's going to take time to reach you and you're out of food. That's when a buzzing drone comes flying in for a landing. Not only do you get the snacks, medicine or water it's carrying, you can eat the wings to tide you over until the rescue team arrives.

This scenario could become real. A team with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL) has developed a prototype edible drone. The munchable machine is part of a broader project called RoboFood. RoboFood is about investigating edible robots for humans and animals as well as foods that behave like robots.

The team published its work online with the title "Towards edible drones for rescue missions: design and flight of nutritional wings." The study is tackling the problem of getting commercial drones to carry enough of a payload to help people in emergency situations.

  Full Article.   

The Economics of YouTube

Have now followed former University Prof Adam Ragusea for a few months on YouTube.  Mostly about food and cooking topics.    All very nicely and informatively done.  A good intro into the YouTube economy.   He has moved his family to a YouTube based economy and writes about the experience to date in a recent YouTube post: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6pVD9Bya3E

Ask Adam: How does YouTube money work (or not)?     (PODCAST E23)

31,155 views Aug 27, 2022

Adam Ragusea, 2.03M subscribers   #podcast #askadam #foodie #foodpodcast #cookingpodcast #q&a

Using AI to Fight Food Fraud

Somewhat unexpected application, good details embedded here.  Note the automated tasting sensors involved, which we investigated for coffee taste applications.

Using AI to Fight Food Fraud  By Sandrine Ceurstemont, Commissioned by CACM Staff, July 7, 2022

Food fraud is a global problem that typically involves the dilution or mislabeling of food products, or ingredient substitution. In 2013, horse meat was found in many supermarket meals in Europe that claimed to contain beef, for example, while milk has often been found to be waterd down in India to increase profits.

A 2021 study by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization cited a 2018 European Commission finding that estimated " the cost of food fraud for the global food industry is approximately EUR 30 billion" (about $30.5 billion) each year.

While chemical analyses can be carried out in a lab to authenticate food, traditional methods are often expensive, time-consuming, and require technical expertise. That is why researchers are aiming to develop new tools that harness artificial intelligence (AI) to enable rapid, inexpensive screening of food and beverages.

"It would be a very exciting scenario to have AI help us expand the reach and impact of chemical analyses," says Patrick Ruch, a research staff member at IBM Research in Zurich, Switzerland. "All of the intelligence can be on a smartphone or in the cloud."

Ruch and his colleagues have been working on a system to authenticate beverages called HyperTaste that uses a small, portable device called an electronic tongue (e-tongue), combined with machine learning. The e-tongue contains 16 sensors made of conductive polymers that can be thought of as taste buds; when dipped into a drink, the sensors pick up chemical information in the liquid that can be converted into a unique digital fingerprint measured as a time series of voltages. "We know that the signal that we're measuring is a unique indicator of what's inside the liquid because these polymers are interacting with all of the small molecules inside," says Ruch.

Machine learning then is used to make sense of the complex signal detected, for example to identify a specific brand of wine or its origin. In recent work, Ruch and his colleagues focused on wines and juices, training three different machine learning models to perform various recognition tasks using data collected with a sensor-equipped robotic device. The automated system dipped its sensors into nine different types of fruit juices several times, collecting 72 voltage time-series measurements. The process was repeated using 11 different types of Italian red wines to generate 110 measurements. "Nowadays, you can really quickly obtain the data needed for training with automation," says Ruch. "Within half a day to maximum a day, you have all the training data you need."  ... ' 

Uber Tries Autonomous Food Delivery

How broadly, how practical?  Scale considerations?

Uber Launches Robot Food Delivery in California

By Reuters, May 26, 2022

Uber Technologies Inc. has rolled out pilot food delivery services that use autonomous vehicles in Santa Monica and West Hollywood, CA.

Both services are available to Uber Eats users, with one relying on autonomous cars, in collaboration with Motional, the self-driving joint venture of Hyundai Motor Co. and Aptive PLC, and another using sidewalk robots from Serve Robotics.

Human operators will monitor the autonomous vehicles in both services. Uber indicated that "it will be some time before this technology is operated at scale."  ... Uber said the autonomous cars and sidewalk robots are actively monitored by human operators, adding that "it will be some time before this technology is operated at scale." 

From Reuters

View Full Article   

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.  

Beware Food and Agriculture

 In ZDNet: 

FBI warns of ransomware attacks targeting food and agriculture sector  ... 

In addition to the May attack on JBS, the FBI listed dozens of ransomware incidents that have taken place over the last six months targeting the food sector.

By Jonathan Greig    ... 

Wagyu Beef 3-D Printed

Impressive, beef printed from stem cells.

Scientists Reveal World's First 3D-Printed Wagyu Beef

Interesting Engineering, Derya Ozdemir, August 25, 2021

Scientists at Japan's Osaka University have unveiled what they are calling the first-ever three-dimensionally-printed Wagyu beef, created using stem cells extracted from cattle. A key challenge was replicating the beef's marbled composition. The researchers isolated bovine satellite cells and adipose-derived stem cells from Wagyu cows, then incubated and differentiated them into the cells needed to generate individual fibers for muscle, fat, and blood vessels, and stacked them to resemble Wagyu's marbling. The researchers sliced the stacks perpendicularly into laboratory-cultured beef slices, enabling a high level of customization within the meat structure. The researchers said the printed meat "looks more like the real thing," adding that the process may be used to generate other complex structures.... '

Food & Beverage Consumer Research and Prospective Marketing

 Mady new kinds of prospective marketing enabled by AI methods that 

How PepsiCo uses AI to create products consumers don’t know they want  in Venturebeat

By Sage Lazzaro  @sagelazzaro

If you imagine how a food and beverage company creates new offerings, your mind likely fills with images of white-coated researchers pipetting flavors and taste-testing like mad scientists. This isn’t wrong, but it’s only part of the picture today. More and more, companies in the space are tapping AI for product development and every subsequent step of the product journey.

At PepsiCo, for example, multiple teams tap AI and data analytics in their own ways to bring each product to life. It starts with using AI to collect intel on potential flavors and product categories, allowing the R&D team to glean the types of insights consumers don’t report in focus groups. It ends with using AI to analyze how those data-driven decisions played out. 

“It’s that whole journey, from innovation to marketing campaign development to deciding where to put it on shelf,” Stephan Gans, chief consumer insights and analytics officer at PepsiCo, told VentureBeat. “And not just like, ‘Yeah, let’s launch this at the A&P.’ But what A&P. Where on the shelf in that particular neighborhood A&P.”  ... ' 

Bioactive Paper for Food Packaging

for Reducing plastic waste

Bioactive paper coatings to replace plastic for packaging foods

Press Release:  Research News / May 03, 2021

The amount of plastic waste increases every year. Some of this waste is due to plastic packaging used to protect food. As part of the “BioActiveMaterials” project, researchers at the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft have developed an eco-friendly coating for paper packaging. With this, not only is plastic saved, but the coating of plant-based proteins and waxes also extends the shelf life of the food. After use, the packaging can be placed in the waste paper recycling bin for disposal.

A resealable bag made of paper with the coating on the inside. After use, the packaging is placed in the waste paper recycling bin with the bioactive materials.

In the coating process, the paper is guided over rolls and provided with the “BioActive Materials”. These are supplied in the form of an aqueous dispersion.

Nowadays, those who shop for food in discount stores will almost always be buying plastic packaging as well. The vast majority of sausage, cheese, meat and fish is pre-packed. Fresh fruit, salad and vegetables too often come in plastic packaging. This method is hygienic and protects the food on its journey to the home. However, mineral oil-based plastics are contributing to the growing waste mountain. In Germany, a total of 38.5 kilograms of plastic packaging waste per capita was generated in 2017 alone. This plastic waste floats on the oceans or is exported to Asian or African countries for disposal. Exposed to environmental factors, these large plastic items break down into microplastics, which eventually make their way into the food chain. Reducing plastic packaging in the food sector as well, then, is a matter of necessity.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV and the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB have now presented an innovative and sustainable solution for food packaging. Just as with conventional packaging, it keeps the food fresher for longer. The new packaging, though, involves no plastic whatsoever. After use, it can be recycled without a problem.

Proteins, waxes and antioxidants extend the shelf life of the food

In the “BioActiveMaterials” project, the researchers use paper as the base material for producing typical and functional packaging materials: resealable bags or wrapping paper. The paper is provided with a special coating using standard processes. The researchers make this coating from proteins and waxes with biobased additives. The special formulation of this coating, which offers long-term stability, performs several functions at the same time. “First, the proteins act as an oxygen barrier layer while the waxes form a water vapor barrier, preventing fruit, for example, from drying out quickly. Second, the biobased additives have an antioxidative and antimicrobial effect. This stops meat and fish spoiling as quickly. Overall, the food has a much longer shelf life,” explains Dr. Michaela Müller, Head of the Functional Surfaces and Materials Innovation Field at Fraunhofer IGB. The proteins in the coating also play specific roles. They prevent mineral oil permeation from the paper to the food. Recovered paper in particular contains residues of mineral oil-containing printer’s ink.

FlavorGraph: Food Pairings with AI and Molecular Science

Combines a number of interests of mine.  Food science and AI, Chemistry and Graph Analytics.   At the link see some impressive graphs that look at the connections  Nicely done approach to loooking at a complex problem.  In our own food industry area, coffee blending, we looked at some aspects of this, but just barely.  Worth a look if you are in the area.

 (Update:  Hmmm ... just acted as a tester of new spice blends for McCormick. Might this act as a means of generating potential new blends for them? )

FlavorGraph Serves Up Food Pairings with AI, Molecular Science  By Isha Salian

Tags: Data Science, featured, Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence, News

It’s not just gourmet chefs who can discover new flavor combinations— a new ingredient mapping tool by Sony AI and Korea University uses molecular science and recipe data to predict how two ingredients will pair together and suggest new mash-ups. 

Dubbed FlavorGraph, the graph embedding model was trained on a million recipes and chemical structure data from more than 1,500 flavor molecules. The researchers used PyTorch, CUDA and an NVIDIA TITAN GPU to train and test their large-scale food graph.

Researchers have previously used molecular science to explain classic flavor pairings such as garlic and ginger, cheese and tomato, or pork and apple — determining that ingredients with common dominant flavor molecules combine well. In the FlavorGraph database, flavor molecule information was grouped into profiles such as bitter, fruity, and sweet. 

But other ingredient pairings have different chemical makeups, prompting the team to incorporate recipes into the database as well, giving the model insight into ways flavors have been combined in the past. .... " 

Coffee Analysis Using Pattern Recognition

Used to be in the coffee blend analysis and optimization space, so this was interesting.  Nicely done.  We did some similar things with classical optimization and statistical systems.  Below an intro, link takes you to more detail exploration and to the data and technical details.  Also a good example of this kind of pattern recognition problem.   See my 'Coffee' tag below for many mentions of our work and related research.

Comparing Coffee using Pattern Recognition

Exploring coffee similarities using cupping grades and flavors

By Robert McKeon Aloe   in Towards Data Science

After trying a variety of coffees from around the world, I have often wondered if coffee grades or flavors could tell me which coffees were similar to each other and which were different. I am particularly interested if such comparisons could be used to help determine the best blends by increasing my understanding of how coffees relate to each other. Luckily, I found some data to investigate just that question.

I have looked at two databases with coffee grades, and previously, I’ve used the CQI database to investigate similarities between coffees. I’m applying the same techniques here.

I amended one of the databases from Sweet Maria’s. I previously pulled their Q-scores, but they also had flavor ratings for each coffee. So I went back, and I pulled flavor ratings for all the beans. I ended up with a slightly larger database than previously at 407 coffees. ... "

Crop Inspection

 Recall my interest in crop and forestry inspection and improvement.  See the related tags. Here another example in play to improve production.

Alphabet Trialing Solar-Paneled, Robotic Buggies to Inspect Crops

CNBC, Anmar Frangoul

Google parent Alphabet is piloting a project to revolutionize agriculture and food production. The company’s Mineral initiative aims to use solar-powered electric buggies to travel across fields and locate plants using global positioning system software; cameras and other "machine perception tools" then collect crop data. The system combines the robot-acquired data with information on weather and soil health, in order to "help breeders understand and predict how different varieties of plants respond to their environments." Said Alphabet’s Elliot Grant, “Just as the microscope led to a transformation in how diseases are detected and managed, we hope that better tools will enable the agriculture industry to transform how food is grown.”   ...

Japanese Robots Learn Food Prep: Resemble Kangaroos

Note the proposal that at first the food will be prepared by humans  remotely, and those motions will be learned.  Then the system will use that learning to prepare foods afterwards.   By robots resembling kangaroos.

Japanese Robot to Clock In at Convenience Store
Reuters
Tim Kelly; Kevin Buckland
July 15, 2020

In August, a robot from Japanese developer Telexistence will prepare food at a FamilyMart convenience store, with plans to expand its deployment to about 20 outlets in Tokyo by 2022. Human operators initially will operate the Model T robots remotely with virtual reality goggles and motion-sensor controls until their artificial intelligence can learn to mimic human movements. Telexistence uses human operators to train its robots, which is far less expensive than complex programming. The Model T vaguely resembles a kangaroo, a design choice meant to put shoppers at ease by avoiding a more unsettling human like appearance.  ..." 

Robotic Food Butchers

The first steps in large scale replacement of human labor?

Tyson Turns to Robot Butchers, Spurred by Coronavirus Outbreaks
The Wall Street Journal
Jacob Bunge; Jesse Newman

Engineers and scientists at meatpacking company Tyson Foods are developing an automated deboning system to process meats in order to avoid spreading infectious diseases like Covid-19, as well as maintain productivity amid staff shortages. Tyson CEO Noel White said the pandemic likely will accelerate company investments—currently estimated at $500 million—in technology and automation. Tyson president Dean Banks said training robots to cut and sort meat, which involves soft material and variability, is a massive operational challenge compounded by low temperatures and blood splatter at meat plants. Tyson technicians are attempting to teach machines to identify and quickly adjust to differences in meat coloration and shape. Banks said the technology is necessary to relieve plant bottlenecks due to a lack of skilled workers. Tyson designed a water-jet cutting system that carves up chicken breasts more precisely than humans.  ... " 

Covid Changing the Way we Eat?

Implications for food related industries.

How COVID-19 has changed the way we eat, according to five experts
Top executives from General Mills, Impossible Foods, Land O’Lakes, and more talk about how the pandemic has changed our relationship to food. 
  By Asmin Gagne and Ainsley Harris  in FastCompany

For Fast Company’s Shape of Tomorrow series, we’re asking business leaders to share their inside perspective on how the COVID-19 era is transforming their industries. Here’s what’s been lost—and what could be gained—in the new world order.  ... " 

Refraction AI Contactless Food Delivery

Here is an excerpt from Spectrum IEEE on robotic solutions.   Featuring Refraction AI, a  contactless food delivery system.   Plus a number of videos of related solutions, go to the link below to see them.

Video Friday: Robot Startup Refraction AI Testing Contactless Food Delivery   By Evan Ackerman, Erico Guizzo and Fan Shi

Refraction AI, founded by University of Michigan researchers, has developed a three-wheeled autonomous vehicle called REV-1 that is providing delivery services from local restaurants in Ann Arbor.

Editor's Picks
Self-driving delivery vehicle developed by Unity Drive Innovation (UDI)
Robot Vehicles Make Contactless Deliveries Amid Coronavirus Quarantine
UVD Robots ultraviolet disinfecting robots deployed to China to fight coronavirus outbreak
Autonomous Robots Are Helping Kill Coronavirus in Hospitals

Dutch Police Training Eagles to Take Down Drones
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We’ll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here’s what we have so far (send us your events!):

ICRA 2020 – June 01, 2020 – [Virtual Conference]
RSS 2020 – July 12-16, 2020 – [Virtual Conference]
CLAWAR 2020 – August 24-26, 2020 – Moscow, Russia
ICUAS 2020 – September 1-4, 2020 – Athens, Greece
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.

Refraction AI, a University of Michigan startup that began delivering food in late 2019, says its pilot deployment of five “Rev-1” robots is doing four times as many runs since the COVID-19 crisis began. The small fleet of delivery robots helps keep employees and patrons safer by limiting human to human contact while also helping restaurants save money on delivery services due to the lower cost of Refraction AI’s service.  .... "

Stressed, not Broken Food Supply Chain

Good piece in Supermarket News.  Been following closely, and my observations are that though the shelves are less full, and variety may have been hit, there is still lots to buy..

Supply chain is not broken — but it’s definitely stressed, says Abe Eshkenazi
CEO of the Association for Supply Chain Management shares his thoughts on the U.S. food supply chain in the coronavirus crisis
By Michael Browne  SMN| May 12, 2020

After a two-week period in which one of the nation’s largest meat processing companies declared the food supply chain “broken,” President Trump declared that meat plants must stay open and retailers began imposing limits on meat purchases, Supermarket News sat down for a Zoom interview with Abe Eshkenazi, CEO of the Association for Supply Chain Management (ASCM) to get some perspective on the issue of food supply amid coronavirus in the U.S. Chicago-based ASCM is the largest non-profit association for supply chain companies around the world.

“From our perspective, we don't think the food supply chain is broken as much as it is stressed,” Eshkenazi said. “When you take out labor, one of the most significant aspects of the supply chain, you're going to have a significant disruption within the supply chain. So I think we can understand that from Tyson Foods’ perspective, they're dealing with a new and unforeseen break in their services. But I think we also have seen that it takes time for supply chains to respond. So I don't know that they're as much broken as they are stressed right now for the food supply chain.”  ... "

Online Free Webinar Series: Analytics Leadership in Uncertain Times

Upcoming online, free webinar looks to be of interest, note coverage of CPG, Retail and supply chain domains and Pandemic implications.  Looks to be useful for non-practitioners and managers who have to deal with analytics development  and operations.

Carl H. Lindner College of Business 2906 Woodside Drive
Cincinnati, OH, 45221
513-556-5710
UCBusAnalytics@ucmail.uc.edu

Analytics Summit 2020 Free Webinar Series

Analytics Summit 2020, the Center for Business Analytics' flagship event, has been recreated as a series of free webinars.  Join us on-line for the first episode "Analytics Leadership in Uncertain Times", featuring four speakers and leaders of analytics from McDonald’s, P&G, 84.51 and ADM. Details and the registration link are below.

This first event will be held on June 1 from 12:00-2:00 EST and is open to the public and *FREE*.  Additional episodes are scheduled for June 15 and June 29 and information will be available soon.

You can register for the first episode on June 1 here

Stay well!
Center for Business Analytics Team

Episode 1: "Analytics Leadership in Uncertain Times"
June 1, 12:00-2:00 PM

Session 1: "When a Data Geek Speaks"
Alex Gutman, Lead Data Scientist, 84.51

Abstract: Within many companies, there’s a communication barrier between decision makers and data scientists. As a result, business professionals, managers, and executives often find themselves making decisions based on data and analytic methods they do not fully understand. This talk addresses this communication barrier and aims to help business professionals become better consumers of analytics. By becoming more informed on the technical aspects and challenges your data scientists face, you’ll be able to ask smarter questions, form better opinions, and make better decisions about the analytics you encounter in the workplace.

Session 2: "Intelligent Disruption of the Global Food Chain"
 Jarrod Anderson, Emerging Technology Lead, ADM

Abstract: This talk explores disruption as a convergence of technologies that are coming together to unlock new possibilities within the global food and agriculture system. Technological disruption implies systems change, rather than simple product substitution. As with any industry transformation, feedback loops hold back the new in favor of the old. Once certain tipping points have been reached, however, such loops begin to favor the new over the old. The use of data science and artificial intelligence in the support of these changes are key in helping to feed the world.

Panel Discussion:

Join us as four seasoned leaders of analytics in the CPG, Retail, and Food industries discuss how they empowered their organizations to solve real-time problems related to the COVID-19 pandemic.  Learn how agility counts when faced with significant disruption and how inspirational leadership matters.  The panelists will address such topics as: How did the pandemic change how your organization's work is done on a day-to-day basis? Has your leadership style changed as a result of this?  What lessons have you learned thus far and how will this affect how your organization works in the future?  ....   "  

More details:  Analytics Summit 2020 Free Webinar Series 

Tracking and Tracing Pineapple

More food  tracking and tracing as a key application.  As part of the IBM consortium. 

The Dole Food Company has a five-year blockchain plan for stronger food safety.  By Danny Nelson in Coindesk

Dole aims to launch blockchain product tagging and other “advanced traceability solutions” across its three business divisions – tropical fruits, fresh vegetables and other diversified products – in a bid to enhance food safety operations by 2025.

The deadline, contained in its sustainability report released Wednesday, charts a system-wide redesign of how Dole, one of the world’s largest fruits and vegetables distributors, traces its food. Top of mind is improving the speed with which Dole can identify trouble spots in the supply chain during a recall of contaminated products, something it has worked on improving for years through its association with IBM Food Trust.

“Blockchain cuts the average time needed for food safety investigations from weeks to mere seconds,” the report said. “Produce that’s been logged via blockchain can be instantly tracked back through the supply chain, giving retailers and consumers confidence in the event of a recall.” ... '