Robots that watch for social cues could feed people by gauging when they are ready for a mouthful. This may make it easier for people who can't feed themselves, such as those with tetraplegia, to socialise. People who can't control their legs or arms can use commercial robotic arms to help them eat.

But the mealtime choreography that most of us take for granted is harder to automate than you might think. To master the use of a fork, researchers needed to deconstruct the intricate UX of eating. As a result, the feeding robot is actually a product of several studies. First and foremost, the robot had to learn how to properly poke foods. Perhaps that sounds simple, but imagine the difference in how it feels to pierce the surface of a crunchy carrot, a smooth but squishy grape, or a soft banana.

Scientists have created a strange chest-mounted robot that could feed the greediest of people when they're too full to move. The peculiar'Arm-A-Dine' robot arm attaches to the middle of someone's chest and takes food from their plate to their mouth. The robot, which is still just a prototype, is designed to augment the social experience of eating, researchers say. The robotic arm was created by Exertion Games Lab at RMIT University in Australia and the Indian Institute of Information Technology Design. 'Arm-A-Dine is our design exploration of a novel two-person playful eating system that focuses on a shared feeding experience', researchers told Spectrum.