MyRobotKitchen Dagmar Reinhardt

Dagmar Reinhardt Associate Professor

Lian Loke Associate Professor, Head of Design

Imagine you are in the kitchen and a robot is right next to you, working with you, side by side, to prepare a delicious meal. Alternatively, this kitchen might be a workshop, with a variety of different tools and processes taking place, which are more precisely differentiated by cold and hot stations and materials.

What is the nature of a domestic space in 2030? A place for food production and consumption? A place where families create their stories around the different processes that are centred around food? Food defines culture(s). Food makes communities and brings people together. Food shapes our memories and personal experience, and is intimately connected to identity, our families, and our cultural backgrounds. Interestingly, architecture and food share defining aspects and criteria: body, place, time, process, materiality. A shared meal is of social significance as one of the oldest exchanges between people, where traditional rituals and customs feature particular dishes (and preparation thereof) that are deeply ingrained in culture. Dishes evoke memories of childhood comfort, of ancestry and heritage.

The changes that have taken place to the architecture of the kitchen over centuries is a domain of research, design, engineering, anthropological studies and artistic speculation. In the dark and spacious medieval kitchens, livestock was kept, and trade conducted. The Frankfurter Kitchen by Grete Schuette-Lihotzky organises storage items and optimises body movement. In Francis Bacon’s messy and artistic workshop-kitchen, paint brushes were cleaned. Allen Wexler’s Crate house neatly packs kitchen and household items into a series of cubes and crates. In Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle, the kitchen is an unknown landscape where the functions and programs cannot be derived from the objects. Hariri and Hariri suggested a digital butler for MOMA’s Un-private House exhibition: a personalised chef who provides recipe instructions through digital interactive surface.

MyRobotKitchen1 explores robots in the kitchen as a domain for human-robot collaboration. How is a cobot framework set up? ‘Cobots’, also known as collaborative

1 MyRobotKitchen is a research project by D Reinhardt and L Loke in collaboration with DMaF and BOSCH and a C2P2021research elective. 2 Colgate and Peshkin, 1996 2 Moley, https://moley.com/ 3 Colgate, JEC 1996 ’Cobots: Robots for Collaboration with Human Operators’, Proceedings of the International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exhibition, (Atlanta, pp. 433-439)

robots, corobots, and Intelligent Assist Devices (IADs), are designed to allow humans and robots working together side by side, in direct physical interaction with a human user and within a shared workspace2. HumanRobot collaboration has generated interest across the robotics and manufacturing industries. Unlike traditional robot applications, collaborative applications allow operators to share their workspace safely. Usually, employing advanced proximity sensing technology enables a conventional industrial robot to be turned into a cobot. Defined as International Standards ISO 10218 and to assist in co-working, collaborative features include safety monitored stops (where a cobot will cease movement temporarily when a human enters the work zone); hand guiding (to teach a robot a path through a sequences of motions required to complete a task, using end effector technology to sense position and read forces); speed and separation monitoring (with frequent human intervention, laser vision systems allow the robot to sense a human’s proximity and be programmed accordingly); and finally, power and force limiting (whereby robots read forces such as pressure, resistance or impacts using embedded sensors).

A world-first consumer robotic kitchen was launched by Moley in 2020,3 with a chef’s methods and techniques captured through a 3D motion tracking system and translated into movement using bespoke algorithms, able to deliver 500-plus recipes. In contrast, MyRobotKitchen investigates the adoption of a six-axis robot arm for residential domestic use, by developing method to translate cooking, as a series of actions, into cooking with an industrial robotic arm. At the core of this human-robot collaboration sits a three-arm problem: there are two human arms, and one robotic one within the same space and work zone. A simple strategy for cooking with an industrial robotic arm could look like this: • arrange your kitchen utensils, including plates, bowls and tools, around the robot • place pre-measured amounts of ingredients for the recipe and set the cookware around the target robot • digitize tools and invent tooling hybrids (a ‘spife’/spoon/knife etc) • test a setup through a robot simulation in the robot programming software KUKA|prc (which effectively replicates the cooking environment) • analyse the actions that can be undertaken by a human, and by the robotic arm, with particular focus on what is achievable and what is meaningful. Some motions can be done better

by a human (movement and dexterity, sensing, reach) while for others a robot is better (exact motions, heat resistance, repetition) • define a number of primitive motions for the robot in correspondence to a tool (coupling an action with a function), such as grabbing, releasing, moving, dropping, hitting, pouring, mixing, and flipping. These motions require a movement line through space, and the rotation of the robot arm, and can be part of a motion library created first manually (tracking in space) or digitally (defining a line in GH). • test all motions by simulation in KUKA|prc to check robot path, potential collisions and workability, so that robot actions can be corrected or confirmed • working with the actual robot, establish a database and motion library that allows categorisation and repurposing of motions and actions, • trial and adapt robot programs in a different context • repeat.

Embedded in this site for domestic life, the robot becomes a support act, collaborator, and performer – a remote or distant role model or family member. Food production and preparation require skill and patience. Cooking is a craft with embodied knowledge of the tools and utensils, of the heat and temperatures, of the chemistry of different ingredients. A robot can be trained for action and in return teach and demonstrate process knowledge. Extrapolating from this – actions and tasks, analytical studies and pipelines developed through MyRobotKitchen could be used for many other applications where robots and human work in the same space.

Introducing a robot arm to our kitchens fundamentally connects to larger concerns of how we live, what resources are available, and how these are distributed. The kitchen has its own rules of economy and in that sense is a microcosm of the world. A robot-supported domestic environment can connect to big data, and thus address reverse speed, homogeny, expediency and globalisation. It can link into initiatives such as the Slow food and Farm-to-Fork movements; integrate with community gardens; share communal values of regional context and supply; and support the individual in adapting methods for sustainable resources, waste and recycling strategies and circular economies.