Cooky: a cooperative cooking robot system

Abstract

We propose a cooperative cooking robot system that operates with humans in an open environment. The system can cook a meal by pouring various ingredients into a boiling pot on an induction heating cooker and adjusting the heating strength according to a recipe that is developed by the user. Our contribution is in the design of the system incorporating robotic- and human-specific elements in a shared workspace so as to achieve a cooperative rudimentary cooking capability. First, we provide a graphical user interface to display detailed cooking instructions to the user. Second, we use small mobile robots instead of built-in arms to save space, improve flexibility, and increase safety. Third, we use special cooking tools that are shared with the robot. We hope insights obtained in this study will be useful for the design of other household systems in the future. A previous version of our system has been presented [1]. This demonstration will show an extended version with a new robot and improved interaction design.