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Comment by contingencies | Hacker News Reader

Crazy early (1985!) example of a recipe markup system, RxOL: https://web.archive.org/web/20021105191447/http://anthus.com...

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That's an interesting article. Thanks for sharing. Maybe something more structured than MealMaster is required when programming a kitchen robot in the future ;)

Yes, that was our conclusion after reviewing numerous pre-existing systems, and we have now built one (the robot, and the more structured recipe markup system). RxOL was just one system we reviewed, which I appreciated for the article's explicit discussion of the rationale for its architecture.

Wow. Really? Do you have any videos of the robot to share?

Absolutely not, for IP protection reasons. 4 years of R&D. Our strategy for commercialization is wholly owned network operation. Quite unlike the apparent de-facto strategy within the segment of "wow-factor novelty" we have designed for operation as an always-available urban utility.

Examples of "wow-factor novelty robots": Foodom in Guangzhou, Ekim/Pazzi in France, Creator in SF, Spyce in Boston, etc.

It seems the done thing, when that fails to commercialize, is that you spend marketing budget on expensive chefs to convince people the food is good, then you go back to your investors for more money, then you become a zombie startup...

(Edit: Oh there are many more projects... it is quite an active area globally, despite a lack of significant successes. Most making the same mistakes. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmXLqImT1wE&feature=youtu.be and https://patents.google.com/?q=food&assignee=Amf+Incorporated... for an early example.)

Ok, I wish you success with your endeavour. Sounds like a really futuristic project :)

Thanks for the project list. I was only aware of Moley robotics.

PS: I have played with robots a bit myself: https://github.com/wedesoft/arduino-sainsmart

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