Is a robot going to take away Grandma’s job of making cookies? It sure seems that way when you see Bakebot at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence laboratory. The robot which was built by MIT graduate student Mario Bollini is a WillowGarage PR2 robot that can bake up a batch of cookies from scratch.
The robot just happens to wear an apron resembling protective gown and mixes up cookie dough by holding the mining bowl in the left hand and using a rubber spatula in the right. The head of the robot has a laser scanner and a sensor camera that allow it to see what ingredients it needs and how much mixing and stirring it needs to do.
MIT PR2 Bakebot testing
Then once the mixing is over Bakebot can place the dough onto a baking sheet and pat the mixture into cookie shapes. It is still quite a messy affair and its creator Mario Bollini is currently working with other students and professors to program the Bakebot to clean up after itself by wiping down the table and putting the baking sheet into the oven.
While teaching a robot to bake may seem like a silly thing to do it amply illustrates how difficult it is for a robot to follow a complicated set of instructions. The age of robot maids and mechanic butlers is still a distant dream when the Bakebot can mix ingredients to make the cookies but not yet place them in the oven to bake.