Robots Cooking Noodles in South Korea
Robots are making their way into more and more restaurants around the world. They’ve been cooking and serving foods like pizza, ice cream, and fried chicken. Now they are getting into the noodle game.
Meet the Cloi Chefbot. It comes from LG Electronics and it’s cooking and serving noodles at a VIPs restaurant in Deungchon-dong in western Seoul’s Gangseo District.
The process is pretty simple. The customers put their noodles and ingredients into a bowl and hand it to the Cloi Chefbot. The giant arm will grab the bowl of ingredients, mix in the noodles, and pour the hot water. In less than a minute, the customer will receive their meal.
VIPs is owned by CJ Foodville of the CJ Group. The South Korean restaurant chain has been partnering with LG to develop serving and chef robots for restaurants since April.
Hazards of Ramen
According to the two companies, Cloi Chefbot’s purpose is to help restaurant employees avoid facing hazardous and physically demanding tasks of dealing with boiling water and hot ingredients when cooking noodles.
“This is the first time that LG launched a robot chef to restaurant. CJ Foodville helped us a lot in developing the CLOi Chefbot as they gave advice on where the robot chefs can be used the most efficiently. We expect the chef robot will reduce repetitive and dangerous tasks and will subsequently enable restaurants to focus on better serving their customers,” said an LG official.
CLOi Chefbot Mimics Real Chef Movements
The CLOi Chefbot operates using motion control technology. LG studied the movements of chefs to develop an AI software that allows the robot to recreate their motion without dropping the bowls or utensils.
The two companies hope to increase the use of robot chefs and implement them at other restaurants. CJ Foodville runs 8 restaurant and franchise brands throughout the country.
“Thanks to the cooperation with CJ Foodville, LG could offer a differentiated value to customers. We will try to find more ways to utilize robotics in the food and beverage sector to provide enhanced customer experience and improve its competitiveness in the robot business,” said Roh Jin-Seo, head of LG’s robotics business.
Robots serving food and drink are nothing new to South Korea. Coffee chain Dal.komm recently began implementing robot baristas in a few of their locations throughout the country.
Check out our articles on an ice cream robot vending machine and Dubai’s first robot cafe.