The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, programmed their robotic chef with a'cookbook' of eight simple salad recipes. After watching a video of a human demonstrating one of the recipes, the robot was able to identify which recipe was being prepared and make it. In addition, the videos helped the robot incrementally add to its cookbook. At the end of the experiment, the robot came up with a ninth recipe on its own. Their results, reported in the journal IEEE Access, demonstrate how video content can be a valuable and rich source of data for automated food production, and could enable easier and cheaper deployment of robot chefs.

The culinary robots are here. Not only to distinguish between food which tastes good and which doesn't, but also to become better cooks. A robot chef designed by researchers at Cambridge University has been trained to taste a dish's saltiness and the myriad of ingredients at different stages of chewing – a process imitating that of humans. It is a step above current electronic testing that only provides a snapshot of a food's salinity. Replicating the human process, researchers say, should result in a tastier end product. "If robots are to be used for certain aspects of food preparation, it's important that they are able to'taste' what they're cooking," said Grzegorz Sochacki, one of the researchers, from Cambridge's department of engineering.