But today, it is still difficult for us to see the "figure" of cooking robots, whether in restaurants or family kitchens. There is still a big gap between the functions and experiences of the existing cooking robots and the market demand.
Is cooking with robots reliable? What problem can it solve? Why can't the existing products meet the market demand well? In what direction should cooking robots develop? Based on the investigation of all kinds of cooking robot products on the market at present, this paper makes a comprehensive analysis and combing of these issues that everyone cares about.
0 1 China cooking is actually very complicated!
1. What is cooking?
"Cooking" means cooking, and "cooking" means cooking. Cooking is cooking, cooking food.
Generally speaking, cooking is thermal processing of food raw materials, and raw food raw materials are processed into mature food; Specifically, cooking refers to the reasonable selection and blending of food raw materials, processing and cleaning, heating and seasoning, so that it becomes a safe and harmless dietary dish with good color, fragrance, taste, shape, quality and nutrition, which is conducive to absorption, health and physical fitness, including both seasoned cooked food and prepared raw food.
2. Types of cooking techniques in China
During the development of Chinese civilization for thousands of years, China cuisine has produced many cooking methods, which are summarized as follows:
(1) Heat transfer with oil: frying, frying, pasting, boiling, frying, frying, etc.
(2) Heat transfer after frying: boiling, stewing, stewing, roasting, etc.
(3) Heat transfer with water: boiling, rinsing, boiling, stewing, simmering, etc.
(4) Steam heat transfer: steaming, steam, etc.
(5) Others: bittern, sauce, smoked, roasted, baked, salted, mixed, shredded, roasted, etc.
3. Cooking and Technological Process in China
Among the many cooking methods of Chinese food, frying is the most commonly used method, accounting for more than 80% of family cooking dishes and more than 60% of restaurant cooking dishes. Stir-frying is also a cooking method with the fastest cooking, the most fragrant taste and good nutrition. However, because cooking needs to be fried quickly, the requirements for cooking skills are also the highest.
The cooking process in China is divided into the following main parts:
(1) Food preparation. Cooking must first have raw materials, that is, ingredients Good cooking needs fresh and high-quality ingredients. The preparation of ingredients includes material selection (material selection), material washing (cleaning), material cutting (knife work) and ingredients (proportioning), some of which need to be prefabricated, such as pickling, foaming, oiling and watering in advance.
(2) Preparation of oil, seasoning and thickening liquid. Choose oils and seasonings suitable for cooking (such as salt, sugar, pepper powder, pepper powder, spiced powder, aniseed F, thirteen spices, cooking wine, soy sauce, oyster sauce, bean paste, tomato sauce, sweet noodle sauce, etc.). ), these are all indispensable parts of fried food.
(3) Preparation for cooking and frying. Is to have cooking infrastructure, first of all, we must choose a suitable heat source (gas stove or electric stove), which can generate enough firepower to make the temperature in the wok reach a fairly high temperature. Secondly, choose a pot with good heat conduction, uniform heat distribution and appropriate weight. Then there is the chef's control of temperature.
(4) Cooking and frying. The chef decides the order and time of putting oil, ingredients and seasonings according to the judgment of temperature change and the requirements of recipes. Then, the ingredients in the pot are heated evenly and ripened quickly by pouring a spoon and scraping a shovel (scattering, turning and pressing). ), move the pot to adjust the fire, thus completing the cooking of the dishes. When some dishes need to be cooked step by step, some temporary turnover treatment should be done. Finally, the dishes are ripe but not too hot, and there is a pot of gas that does not burn the pot. Some dishes should be thickened when they are out of the pot to make them bright.
(5) The dishes are cooked and served.
(6) Cleaning of pots and pans, kitchen utensils and operating environment.
The corresponding technologies of Chinese cooking mainly include: (1) knife technology; (2) Feeding technology; (3) temperature control technology; (4) Sizing, gelatinization, thickening, juice splashing and other processes; (5) mastering the technology of seasoning time and quantity; (6) frying techniques such as spoon and spatula; (7) Plate mounting and plate mounting technology, etc.
The "pot flavor" of Chinese cooking is the basis for cooking to become a mainstream dish, and it is also the main reason for the popularity of instant cooking.
4. The main factors affecting the cooking quality in China.
(1) Selection of ingredients; Good ingredients are the basis of cooking delicious food.
(2) Knife work of ingredients; Knife work affects the ripening speed of ingredients and the taste and impression of diners.
(3) prefabrication of ingredients; Affect the taste and ripening time of ingredients.
(4) Cooking action and temperature control (heat source, cooker, spatula, spoon action, etc. ); It is the most critical link in cooking, which affects the uniformity of heating of ingredients and the maturity speed and degree of dishes.
(5) The sequence, quantity and timing of ingredients and seasonings: affect the taste of dishes and their nutrition and health.
Chinese food pays attention to cooking, "cooking" is reflected in the control of heat, and "blending" is the rational use of seasonings. "Temperature" is the most difficult and important factor in Chinese food.
Why do you need a cooking robot?
1. What is a robot?
Robot is an intelligent machine that can work semi-automatically or fully automatically. It has the basic characteristics of perception, decision-making and execution. It can assist or even replace human beings to complete dangerous, arduous, complex and repetitive work, improve work efficiency, ensure quality standards, serve human life, and expand or extend the scope of human activities and capabilities.
The International Organization for Standardization defines a robot as a machine that can perform tasks such as work or movement through programming and automatic control.
Robots were born in the middle of last century, and were mainly used in industrial fields in the first few decades. It was not until the beginning of this century that it gradually entered the service industry, such as sweeping robots, handling robots, welcoming robots, fire fighting robots, patrol robots, surgical robots, companion robots and so on. With the acceleration of population aging and the change of the younger generation's concept of job selection, robots will be more and more used in all aspects of human life.
2. Problems to be solved by the cooking robot
Cooking is a relatively complicated skill in China cooking, and it can also be called the most complicated skill in the world cooking. Therefore, cooking chefs in China need to study and practice with their masters in special cooking school for a long time.
China cooking is also a physical activity. Chefs have to deal with pots, shovels, stoves, stoves, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and various ingredients in a smoky environment every day. Most chefs' daily work is monotonous and repetitive, lacking challenges, which easily leads to occupational fatigue.
Therefore, since the beginning of this century, people have been trying to invent and design cooking robots. Some are considered from the perspective of commercial application of catering industry, and some are considered from the perspective of family use. Cooking robots try to solve the following problems:
In business.
(1) Solve the problem of changing chefs (and chefs) in restaurants. Its main consideration is to solve the problems of difficult recruitment, difficult management and increased labor cost of chefs.
(2) Solve the stability problem of cooking quality (consistency of products), especially chain catering enterprises.
(3) To solve the problem of frequent changes in restaurant dishes (to meet the changing needs of customers' tastes).
(4) Solve the problems of standardization and intelligence in the industry, realize industrial upgrading in the digital age, improve the efficiency and quality of catering services, reduce overall operating costs and improve profitability. Greatly improve the ability of chain catering enterprises to control stores.
(5) The cooking robot is used to fry near the user's end, which improves the user's taste experience and makes up for the loss in taste, quality and nutrition caused by the existing prefabricated feeding mode of reheating from the central kitchen to the terminal.
(6) Through cooperation with the food supply chain, the comprehensive operating cost can be reduced, the manual and kitchen area of the store can be reduced, the operating efficiency of the store can be improved, and the overall profitability can be improved.
Family aspect
(1) Solve the problem that most people can't cook, don't want to cook and have no time to cook.
(2) Get through the connection between family catering and food supply chain, and save the related tedious housework such as buying, washing and cutting.
(3) You can enjoy a better dining experience at home, the quality of chefs, rich varieties, safety and reliability, and nutritional choices.
(4) Instant cooking is obviously superior to take-away fast food in taste, nutrition, hygiene and safety.
How does a cooking robot work?
1. Design concept of cooking robot
Cooking robots mainly solve the work in the cooking stage, which basically covers the following aspects:
(1) pot body and its heating control. The shape and size of the pot body, the material of the pot body (whether to add Teflon coating), the choice of heat source, the control of heating temperature, etc.
(2) Feeding mode and control. Is the shape and filling method of the food box sealed? How to achieve separate feeding? One dish at a time or multiple dishes?
(3) Feeding methods and control of oil, water and condiments. Condiment state (powder, liquid, sauce, thicken juice, etc.). ), container and feed control mode.
(4) The way and control of spilled ingredients in the pot. Means and control methods to realize turnover.
(5) Turnover and temporary storage required for step-by-step cooking skills of ingredients. Imitate the chef's step-by-step cooking skills.
(6) The dish loading method after cooking. Whether the pallet can be automatically loaded and unloaded.
(7) Wash after boiling. Comprise that cleaning in the pot body and the clean of relevant parts and areas.
(8) Oil fume treatment.
(9) Other auxiliary facilities. Such as oil preheating, water heating (cleaning), oil recovery (oil recycling), cleaning sewage and residue treatment, vegetable box refrigeration and preservation, etc.
(10) Operation panel and control panel of equipment and communication with management system and online ordering system.
2. The technical route, characteristics and difficulties of the existing cooking robot design.
The technical route of cooking robot design has different performances in different stages of cooking, and the specific differences are as follows:
Pot body and spatula:
(1) The traditional wok is equipped with an automatic rotating scraper, and some woks are equipped with a rotating scraper in the center, which is driven by a motor below the wok body; Some pot covers are equipped with spatula, and the motor is at the top of the pot cover. When the pot cover is covered on the pot body, it can be rotated with a spatula to play the role of stirring and dispersing. Other pots are designed to be semi-cylindrical, and the ingredients in the pot can be turned over by rotating the stirring rod. This setting is cooking when the pot is fixed, which is not as good as the chef's spoon-turning skill, and the role of the scraper is limited.
(2) Adding two mechanical arms to the traditional wok can imitate the chef's action of turning the spoon. This method has some disadvantages, such as occupying a large space, making a lot of noise, adding extra weights to improve the stability of the system, and it is easy to splash the ingredients in the pot during cooking.
(3) The top of the cylindrical kettle body is open, the bottom is flat or slightly curved, and some bottoms have protruding edges. A cylinder can rotate around its central axis or turn over on a vertical plane. When entering and leaving the dish, it rotates up or down. When cooking, it keeps rotating at an inclined angle. In the process of rotation, the limited turning of the ingredients in the pot is realized by relying on the bottom edge.
Because there is no scraper design, the cleaning of the cylindrical pot depends on the water flow and the Teflon coating on the inner wall of the pot, and the Teflon coating will produce harmful substances when the temperature is too high, so the temperature of this pot is usually limited to below 260 degrees, which will not support some dishes that need to be cooked at a higher temperature.
(4) pot-shaped pot body. This pot body is actually equivalent to the integration of traditional wok and cylindrical pot body. When the kettle rotates, it looks like a cylindrical kettle body. By changing the rotation acceleration, it can produce the effect of stopping throwing (equivalent to the chef knocking over the spoon). When it is tilted, its throwing surface is like a traditional wok, which can flatten the ingredients and heat them evenly. The pot-shaped pot body can also be equipped with an obstacle-free scraper, which can not only assist in turning and scraping during cooking, but also assist in cleaning the pot body after cooking. Because of the spatula, there is no need to use Teflon coating in the pan, which can realize the high-temperature heat of the chef when cooking.
At present, the above pots are basically heated by electromagnetic heating surrounded by induction coils, which has the advantage of accurately controlling and adjusting the temperature.
The pot and scraper of the cooking robot are the key factors to control the cooking "temperature" and the basis to determine the cooking quality and efficiency.
In terms of food delivery
(1) At present, there are two ways of batching: manual feeding and automatic feeding, and automatic feeding can be divided into two ways. The so-called sub-packaging means that the food box is not integrated with the equipment. When feeding, the food in the food box is put into the pot several times through external mechanical devices. The integrated feeding of food materials is to put the material box into the equipment, and rely on the equipment's own mechanism to complete the actions such as tearing the film, opening the lid and dumping.
(2) At present, most of the ingredients are only put in one box at a time, which is only used to make one dish. Recently, a device has appeared, which can put a group of multiple boxes at a time for continuous cooking of multiple dishes, making it possible for the cooking robot to realize continuous automatic cooking without human intervention.
As far as seasoning delivery is concerned,
Adding seasonings is more complicated, because there are many kinds of seasonings in China, which usually need to be added at different stages of cooking (after hot oil, during cooking and before cooking). Although there are many kinds of compound seasoning packages at present, they can't achieve the taste that traditional cooking techniques can achieve in cooking.
In addition to a wide variety of condiments, due to their different shapes, it is easy to cause problems in storage, output, measurement control, anti-caking, anti-arching, anti-precipitation, anti-blocking, pipeline cleaning and so on. If the seasoning can't be put in relatively accurately, it will directly affect the taste and quality stability of dishes.
Nowadays, some cooking robots use liquid seasonings (turning salt, sugar and other powders into salt water and sugar water), and some use some liquid seasonings and seasoning packages (generally, the seasoning packages are put in a vegetable box with the last ingredients). There is also an innovative design, which solves all the problems of powder, liquid, sauce and thickening liquid, can support the same level as the chef, and can fry more dishes.
The cooking robot's own seasoning distribution system can also support users to choose and customize their own tastes according to their own tastes.
As far as plate loading and dish delivery are concerned.
At present, most cooking robots manually put the dishes at the end or near the end of cooking, then turn the frying pan (cylinder) over and pour the dishes into the plate. Some robots need to manually use tools such as spatula to assist scraping.
There are many dishes in the tray library. When cooking is coming to an end, the top dish is moved below the dish outlet by the mechanical arm in the equipment, and the pot body automatically turns over to pour out all the dishes. The dishes loaded with plates are automatically pushed out by the mechanical arm for users to complete self-help food retrieval.
Cleanliness
(1) Generally, the kettle body is cleaned with high-pressure water flow. For the coated pot body, it can be cleaned immediately after each cooking, which basically does not affect the cooking of the next dish. However, if there is paste or thickening and other viscous substances in the pot, the cleaning may not be complete only by water flow.
(2) Some pots are equipped with spatulas, which can form linear contact with the pot and can be cleaned with high-pressure water flow, thus effectively solving the problem that sticky and sticky substances cannot be washed off.
(3) In addition to the cleaning of the pot, it also involves the cleaning of other parts of the cooking environment, such as the feeding area of the vegetable box and the vegetable loading area. At present, most of these areas are manually cleaned after the cooking task of a unit is completed. There are also methods to realize automatic cleaning by sealing different areas and adding high-pressure water nozzles.
(4) The seasoning pipeline also has cleaning problems. If it is not cleaned for a long time, the residual materials in the pipeline will deteriorate, or the powdery seasoning will be caked by moisture, which will affect the dosage control and even completely fail.
(5) Treatment of waste water and waste residue after cleaning. Generally, wastewater flows directly into the sewer, while waste residue is manually filtered and cleaned after the cooking task of each unit is completed.
Oil fume treatment
Oil fume is inevitable in Chinese cooking. At present, the cooking robot itself has no effective oil fume purification setting, and it is usually discharged through the flue with the help of a range hood and then processed. The difference is that the cooking part of some equipment is not closed, which will lead to the spread of oil smoke. However, some equipment can seal the oil fume in the shell through the internal shell design, and all the oil fume can be sucked away through the exhaust facilities.
Operation panel and control part
Most cooking robots are equipped with operating touch screens, which are used for intuitive menu selection and some operating functions related to power and taste selection, and at the same time display information such as dish contents, images, cooking time progress and so on.
The control system of cooking robot has a special control panel, which is also controlled by PLC.
Some cooking robots can be connected with the system or mobile phone through WiFi or Bluetooth module to realize remote control or user self-help operation.
Other auxiliary design
(1) turnover (temporary storage) device is used to realize step-by-step cooking technology. For example, when the shredded pork is almost cooked, it is temporarily stored aside through the turnover mechanism, and the equipment continues to feed and cook other ingredients. Finally, pour the shredded pork back into the pot, and finally take it out with other ingredients after curing.
(2) Oil preheating system. When cooking continuously, you can reduce the waiting time for cold oil to enter the pot for heating, and start cooking ingredients immediately. Can significantly improve the cooking efficiency and finish cooking quickly.
(3) heating water system. Hot water can be used to support the cleaning equipment, which is convenient and quick to clean off oil stains, and the temperature of the pot body can still be maintained after cleaning in the process of continuous cooking.
(4) Refrigeration module. It is suitable for feeding multiple groups of food boxes at one time when cooking continuously in a unit time period to ensure the freshness of food in the food boxes.
To sum up, the difficulty of China cooking robot is not whether it can fry vegetables, but whether it can fry the cooking quality comparable to that of professional chefs, whether it can reach or even exceed the efficiency of professional chefs, whether it can completely replace labor, and whether it can significantly reduce the overall operating cost in cooperation with the food supply chain (food box preparation and transportation).
3. Types and characteristics of existing cooking robots
According to the classification of cooking pots, they can be divided into three types: spatula cooking machine, drum cooking robot and rotating pot cooking robot.
According to the cooking quantity of each serving, it can be divided into single serving machine, medium serving machine and large serving machine. Single-serving machine is suitable for 1 to 2 people; The medium portion machine is suitable for group meals, and one portion can be shared by 10- 15 people. Large serving machines are often used in central kitchens, mainly used as side dishes when mass-produced lunch boxes are made.
According to the service users, it is divided into: family type (including community and convenience store), commercial fast food type, commercial group meal type and commercial central kitchen type.
-domestic type cooks a small portion at a time, which can be eaten by one person or shared by two people. Robots are small in size, and can be placed on a table, placed in a single dish box, and cooked in a single dish.
—— Commercial fast food can be served in a single serving 1-3, which can be used in social catering stores. Some equipment can realize multi-box feeding, continuous automatic cooking, and provide self-service food retrieval.
—— One serving 10- 15 serving (a large medium plate) for a commercial group chef, which can be used for serving in various forms such as meal sharing and self-selection.
-Commercial central kitchen type, which specializes in making side dishes of box lunch for the central kitchen, cooking dozens of kilograms of dishes at a time. The quality can't be compared with stir-fried food. (Because it is a special equipment, this article will not discuss it in detail. )
From the perspective of cooking quality, the quality of single dish is the best, because the heating is concentrated evenly, heated quickly and matured quickly. Of course, it is also closely related to the heating temperature of the pot and the type of seasoning.
Due to the limitation of space, this paper only expounds half of the full text, and the next dry goods will mainly state the following core contents: Where can cooking robots be used? Cooking robots really need to be "reliable". Cooking robots need food supply chain support, and cooking robots can be expected in the future!