The use of advanced robotic technology is immensely increasing. Some famous people like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have started to warn us about the probable dangers of technology and AI. However, the disasters sound pretty far away because many of the robots are not able to perform their assigned tasks properly. If you are driving to earn a living, you may fear the rise of autonomous cars. But if you make pizzas, just sit back and relax because those poor robotic chefs do not seem to be getting anywhere close.
In the University of Naples Federico II, researchers have been working on a pizza robot for years, and it still refuses to function properly. The machine called Robotic Dynamic Manipulation (RoDyMan) senses the incredible details and precision, but perfect pizza making robot has not been developed yet. One of the world’s best pizzaiolos, Enzo Coccia, was hired to feed the best pizza making technique into the RoDyMan, but to no avail.
The professional pizza expert Coccia writes,
“I have a great responsibility as I have to teach it all the things related to the Neapolitan pizza, the dough grasp and the precision grasp in the toss phase, in which you have to grab and release the dough disc while assessing the texture too, the movements between the palm and thumb, the bimanuality and I have to be able to instill the organizational strategy in bimanual tasks as well.”
Some day, this bot might be able to make the perfect Neapolitan, but the process is extremely complicated and requires high precision skills like kneading, rolling, and tossing. Assembling the pizza is not a huge problem, but allowing the robot to handle the entire process is just not feasible yet.
The robot and its exorbitant costs attracted a number of people and became extremely popular. Many people consider this project insane as it is highly expensive. Some even said that it was a huge waste of dough. However, the developers hope that once it manages to grasp the pizza recipe correctly, its skills will become useful even in the field of medicine.
Project lead Bruno Siciliano talked to Scientific American saying,
“Preparing a pizza involves an extraordinary level of agility and dexterity.” It is pretty easy for a human to toss something into the air and catch it but for a robot to do the same, it requires a humungous level of complexity. After having worked on the robot for five years, Siciliano hopes to get the bot ready by Naples pizza festival in May 2018. It does not mean everyone would be interested in eating that pizza at least not Siciliano himself, who says, “I would never eat a pizza made by a robot. It would not have the taste a real pizzaiolo, with his soul, would put in it.”
Source: Scientific American
Will you prefer to eat this bot-made pizza or the one from your favorite chef? Share your views in the comments’ section below.