Do You Know the 'Taste of Fire'? The Era Where Robots Handle Difficult Wok Cooking Has Arrived

[Financial News] #1. Cooking bot 'X Wok' dedicated to cooking in the kitchen. When a person adds ingredients, X Wok continues the 'wok cooking' by snapping like a human and flipping the ingredients multiple times over the fire. Once the appropriate taste of fire is achieved, the wok cooking is completed. Next is the sauce recipe sequence. The cooking bot 'X Recipe' distributes each ingredient on time and inputs them in the set amount. The X Recipe, set by a person according to the recipe, starts cooking. X Recipe accurately recognizes when and how much ingredients to add to complete a dish with consistent taste.

The appearance of Mandarin Robotics' cooking bots that make collaborative robots for cooking. Recently, cooking bots have been upgraded from simply cutting or mixing ingredients to cooking delicately according to recipes and creating the taste of fire as collaborative robots. It is evaluated that robots are evolving to collaborate with humans instead of replacing them.
■Identical Wok Cooking for 'Uniform Taste of Fire'
According to the industry on the 25th, the robot market is growing with a focus on coexistence with humans. Cooking robots are one of them. In the past, collaborative robots mainly assisted humans in manufacturing sites, but now they are increasing human productivity in various areas such as kitchens.
Lee Geon-woo, director of Mandarin Robotics, said, "Through cooking robots, we can reduce labor such as ingredient preparation while always producing the same taste with wok cooking or seasoning distribution," adding, "Robots improve the quality of food and reduce labor, but this is possible through collaboration with humans, so both people working in the kitchen and consumers tasting the food have high satisfaction."
■Not Replacing Workforce but Solving Labor Shortage
In fact, Mandarin Robotics conceived cooking bots due to labor shortages. During the COVID-19 period, when it was difficult to find skilled chefs in restaurants, they developed cooking bots to solve labor shortages while enabling high-quality cooking. The research of Mandarin Robotics' Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) began, and they developed cooking bots capable of wok cooking or seasoning. Through this, labor shortages were resolved, and high-quality cooking became possible.
However, cooking bots are acting more as a means to solve labor shortages and make cooking more efficient rather than replacing labor. For example, in the catering market, where there are many elderly workers, the task of trimming quality ingredients is very labor-intensive for elderly workers. Therefore, ingredients are sometimes replaced with already prepared ones, but this often results in lower quality compared to ingredients that require a lot of preparation. With the introduction of robots, the ingredient issue has become much easier. This is because they can use the same ingredients that were difficult to prepare but tasted good, while borrowing the labor of robots for the preparation needed.
Furthermore, cooking bots can also help with customized recipes. Robots can produce dishes with consistent taste by following a set recipe. This is advantageous for commercializing and mass-producing a specific recipe, and also easy to maintain consistently. A recipe set by a person is required, and based on this, it can function as a complete collaborative robot.
Kim Min-kyu, CEO of Mandarin Robotics, said, "Our products are currently being operated evenly in the dining sector, including school cafeterias, large companies, public offices, franchise headquarters, large concession companies, and small individual stores," adding, "We aim to be a reliable partner for everyone as a 'human-centered cooking robot' company beyond 'technology-centered intelligent robots'."
jiany@fnnews.com Reporter Yeon Ji-an