Meal preparation is an important instrumental activity of daily living~(IADL). While existing research has explored robotic assistance in meal preparation tasks such as cutting and cooking, the crucial task of peeling has received less attention. Robot-assisted peeling, conventionally a bimanual task, is challenging to deploy in the homes of care recipients using two wheelchair-mounted robot arms due to ergonomic and transferring challenges. This paper introduces a robot-assisted peeling system utilizing a single robotic arm and an assistive cutting board, inspired by the way individuals with one functional hand prepare meals. Our system incorporates a multimodal active perception module to determine whether an area on the food is peeled, a human-in-the-loop long-horizon planner to perform task planning while catering to a user's preference for peeling coverage, and a compliant controller to peel the food items. We demonstrate the system on 12 food items representing the extremes of different shapes, sizes, skin thickness, surface textures, skin vs flesh colors, and deformability.

The kitchen in my first apartment was tiny. As far as counter space, I had one square-foot of it on a corner between the sink and a windowless oven that couldn't even fit a standard-sized cookie sheet. This is perhaps a fine setup for most college students who subsist mostly on pizza and ramen and other generally poor decisions, but I love to cook and bake, so the fact that I knocked my elbows against a wall each time I tried to chop wasn't, in fact, cutting it. To survive, I had to get really creative with my tiny canvas. If you, too, are struggling with an itty-bitty kitchen, this is how to maximize your space. Rule of thumb: Invest in furniture that takes up minimal square footage, but offers a ton of surface space.