Despite claims to the contrary, we value the human touch far too much in our food to ever truly let robots take over the culinary world. But that won’t stop companies from trying, which helps explain Japan’s new sushi bot.
To be fair, this sushi bot seems more interested in assembling pre-made pieces instead of actually making sushi, and it takes some shortcuts tiresome purists would find unforgivable. “Wasabi? From a tube? Heathen machine!” But in the actual assembly, it does manage to put together some decent mall-grade nigiri. It’s nothing that would ever put Jiro Ono out of business, but if you were in an airport and the idea of wolfing down a greasy burger or a stale sandwich turned you off, you’d probably take this sushi with gratitude.
Besides, the really impressive part here is how careful the robots are. They handle some delicate ingredients with precision, instead of just crushing them to dust like robots might have in the past. Even if a robot never serves you a maki roll, the technology shown off here will likely make its way to more important areas like medicine. Although we have to admit, a robo-sushi kiosk would get some money out of us at least once.
(via Gizmodo)
