16.07.2024
How
Disrupting the food industry with adaptive robotics and culinary engineering | Interview with Yegor Traiman, founder and CEO of REMY Robotics
Flipping hamburgers. Frying potatoes and chicken wings. Assembling pizza on a conveyor. Self-driving robotic cooking machines and buses. Undoubtedly, after the pandemic, robots are “invading” the food industry at a faster pace. They are increasingly seen as a competitive advantage in addressing labor shortages and freeing staff from fatigue and boredom from performing repetitive tasks in quick service restaurants (QSRs) and fast food chains.
With increasing adoption, we see the future of food robotics evolving before our eyes. It’s no longer a question of robots becoming a mainstay in the industry, but how quickly they will shape the industry – moving from automating repetitive and batch tasks to fully autonomous robotic kitchens that can produce food from scratch.
Barcelona-based REMY Robotics is betting on this industry shift by producing autonomous robotic kitchens that don’t mimic humans, but use robots for what they do best: precision, speed, repetition to deliver entire meals with products from different cuisines and types of dishes. and recipes.
We spoke with Yegor Treiman, founder and CEO of REMYRobotics, to find out more.
How did you get started with REMY Robotics?
I have a background in cybernetics and I’ve always loved technology. I worked in IT for many years, and when the opportunity to work with robots came up, I took it. I was on the executive team of Arrival (NASDAQ: ARVL), a British electric car manufacturer. Arrival was my first experience in the robotics industry: it made me realize the power of robotics and how robots can make many things easier, safer, and better. I realized that cars weren’t my thing, but I wanted to tap into the exponential potential for change that robotics could bring to our daily lives. I thought, we eat three times a day, so that’s the biggest impact you can have: to fight food. And the food industry is in desperate need of an overhaul. Food waste, terrible working conditions for kitchen staff, low margins for food operators – all these serious problems can be solved through the smart use of robotics. So, I founded Remy.
I wanted Remy to be headquartered in Barcelona, which for me is the best city in the world. I attracted the best from 15 different countries in Europe, Asia, and America. Being in Barcelona means we all have dream jobs and the best quality of life. Sun, sea, delicious food, and tech jobs that don’t require moving to gray, cold, expensive cities. This is the secret recipe for our environment of creativity, trust and ambition.
What is REMY Robotics’ position in the spectrum of automation or autonomy in restaurant robotics?
There are many food technology solutions available, but their application is very limited because they are based on assembly-line robotics, a legacy of industrial robotics (think, for example, of automotive production systems). This approach means that solutions are hardware-driven and therefore inflexible. They can only operate in a fixed, isolated environment, can only produce one type of product at a time, and are extremely expensive to develop. With this approach, if you want to slice a pizza one day and cook a hamburger the next, you need to build two completely different systems.
If you want to truly disrupt the food industry, you need to build a flexible system around robots, not just automate one task in a fixed environment. Our approach to ensuring autonomy, not just automation, is based on adaptive robotics and culinary engineering. Thanks to adaptive robotics, we can prepare any type of food, and our kitchens can be quickly deployed and scaled. We cook by combining the latest technologies – robotics, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence – with food science and human creativity. We put robots first and develop their strengths, not their limitations. For example, we don’t try to force a robot to handle food (robots have poor dexterity), but we let it work with data and neural networks to prepare food with precision, consistency, and speed.
When it comes to food, our team of culinary engineers has developed a new cooking method based on algorithmic cooking. Data-driven precision cooking is made possible because we’ve built an entire ecosystem to support it: proprietary “food capsules,” robotic ovens, ultra-precise temperature control, and AI-assisted quality control. Flexible robots and artificial intelligence organize everything to make sure food is prepared 24/7 and 100% of our orders are accurately prepared.
Tell us about your robotic kitchens. What are the features and limitations?
Our robotic kitchens are fully autonomous kitchens where intelligent equipment uses communication between robots to collect, move, cook, and check food, as well as to replenish stock. The software brings everything together and makes each specialty appliance and intelligent module do what they need to do to automate the kitchen and restaurant.
The kitchen is made up of programmable robotic arms, interconnected equipment such as robotic ovens, refrigerators, quality control machines, and smart shelves. They work together flawlessly thanks to the “brain” of the kitchen – our end-to-end software system and neural networks. Of course, this sounds extremely complicated, and it is. But to the naked eye, our kitchen looks like a very compact unit with a robotic arm in the middle. You can see food being taken from our refrigerators and placed in the oven to be cooked. When the dish is cooked, the robotic arm takes it out and places it in our machine learning-based quality station, where the system decides whether the dish is suitable for the customer or not based on key parameters such as moisture loss or temperature, among others. All decisions – whether to move the food, how long to cook it, etc. – are made by neural networks and software. The magic of working with robots lies in what we humans cannot see. Robots don’t need eyes; they have computer vision. They don’t need hands; they have robotic arms. And they make incredible calculations in fractions of a second. They are never wrong – a level of accuracy that is unattainable for humans. The beauty of true adaptive robotics is that there are no real limits: you can cook almost anything and get the same results every time. They are never wrong – a level of accuracy that is unattainable for humans. The beauty of true adaptive robotics is that there are no real limits: you can cook almost anything and get the same results every time. They are never wrong – a level of accuracy that is unattainable for humans. The beauty of true adaptive robotics is that there are no real limits: you can cook almost anything and get the same results every time.
Can you tell us about a specific example of how food is prepared from the cooking process to the moment it reaches the end consumer?
We cook according to digital recipes that are dynamic, that is, based on algorithms that we feed into our robotic ovens. Our recipes cover the most popular product, lemon and salmon with dill, and end with fried ribs, Indian curry, pasta, dumplings, desserts – whatever you want, we can cook it. We develop formulas for each dish, detailing all the variables to guide our smart oven to perfectly cook the food in our capsules and allow artificial intelligence to check if everything is done properly.
So, let’s say we’re cooking salmon: it starts with our team of culinary engineers categorizing the dish and then developing formulas on how to cook it to different degrees (medium, rare, well done). They then enter variables and create an equation that allows robots that are constantly connected to the ovens to accurately execute the dynamic recipe. The recipe algorithms determine weight, density, water content, desired consistency, meal time (how far away the customer is delivering), and many other variables that ensure the food is cooked to the desired level and quality.
In our central kitchen, humans prepare the food by doing things that robots are not good at: chopping vegetables, processing food, and placing it in food capsules. In the case of our salmon, they cook it “sous vide” and then place it in our food capsules. Once the preparation is complete, QR codes are automatically generated with all the information about the dish, so when a customer orders salmon on Glovo or UberEATS (or any other delivery platform), the robots know exactly what to do.
The online ordering system automatically communicates with robots in our autonomous kitchen, where they start preparing the dish in seconds. Usually, the driver is ready to pick it up as soon as it arrives (we cook 40% faster than in conventional kitchens, and 95% of our orders are prepared just in time). The dish will then continue to cook during delivery (usually 12 to 20 minutes) so that it arrives at your doorstep perfectly cooked.
With Dark Kitchens, you now offer food delivery of in-house virtual brands through platforms like Deliveroo and UberEATS. How is it going?
It’s going great. We have sold 70,000 meals and have great reviews on all platforms – on Glovo we have an average of 97%, which is great. We’re very proud that we’ve managed to create food that people love and keep coming back for (we have a 50% repeat customer rate). Our flagship virtual brand is OMG restaurant, which only offers flexitarian delivery(you can try it if you are in Barcelona), but we also work with other brands of Indian curries, chicken wings, pizza, vegan Chinese food, and much more. All of these brands can be rolled out immediately because we’ve done all the work of developing brand concepts, menus, and digital recipes over the past 12 months, and we’ve also tested them with consumers. We don’t just make what is currently available for sale – we can do (and have done) much more. We have over 100 recipes from all over the world in our arsenal.
Are you currently working with other restaurant brands that offer food delivery?
We are talking to several food operators and have a few pilot projects in the works, but we can’t say more at this time. In the midst of the pandemic, we also started working with physical restaurants to help them set up a delivery system that worked quickly, and it was successful.
Thus, we manage our own food delivery brands, but we also work with other types of food operators: catering services (in universities, hospitals, airports, etc.) and restaurants that want to find a solution to the problem of labor shortages. We can help you set up your robotic kitchen in as little as 24 hours in an area of just 15 square meters and develop a food concept for you in 6 weeks.
We love the delivery space – it’s growing, it’s exciting, and there are innovations ready to go, but the end game for us is to power the commercial kitchens of the food industry as a whole – all segments. We have successfully passed the stage of product adaptation to the market. Our robotic kitchens and the economics behind them are proven.
What are the biggest misconceptions people have about food robotics?
The first big hurdle for us is that when you say “robotic,” people think of a humanoid robot with big eyes that walks around and does what humans do-in our case, chopping vegetables and frying with “wrist-like” movements. To us, this is not just a misconception of what a robot actually is (a humanoid robot is just one type of robot), but also a misconception that creates fear rather than trust. If you think a robot is like you and will replace you, it’s perfectly normal for your first reaction to be to resist it.
This is also unhelpful for two other reasons. First, food robotics that mimic the way humans cook are inherently flawed as a solution to the food industry’s most pressing problem: the labor shortage crisis. The current level of dexterity, i.e., the ability to handle food, of a robot is still very limited and development costs are very high, so solutions that have a robot handling food are only long-term research projects that will not find commercial application for decades. In short, a robot chef is not going to steal your job – not only because it can’t stew your vegetables, but also because you probably don’t need that job. Robotics could mean a better kitchen, where people aren’t performing boring, repetitive tasks at ungodly hours and can instead focus on the more creative parts of food preparation. This would solve the current labor shortage crisis in a way that would result in better profits for food operators and better working conditions for people.
Second, thinking about robots only in terms of anthropomorphized machines fails to understand why we use robots: they do certain things much, much better than we humans. They are precise in ways that we simply cannot be. They are faster, they can work at any time, and they can do the boring tasks we don’t want to do without complaint. From a food industry perspective, this means that kitchen staff can work normal business hours without stressful rush hours and go home to their families, lead social lives, and enjoy creative work with food.
What food trends do you think will emerge in the next 2 years?
So far, we’ve seen food tech focus on automating a single task – with robots that can either flip hamburgers or fry potatoes – or vending machine-style solutions, with automatic dispensers that create bowls for plates or pizza-in-a-box restaurants. These are great innovations, but they have a limited impact on the problem we have to solve: labor shortages. I think that in the next couple of years we will see a shift from automation to autonomy. By that I mean that we will see more truly autonomous solutions where robots do the whole cooking process without human intervention. It is possible – we are doing it. I think we’ll see more of that as the market focuses on the durability of solutions and better ROI.
I also think a new type of quick service restaurant will emerge: The MacDonald’s of the future will be more focused on delivery and will push the boundaries of digitalization – much more than just screens to order food on the spot. The QSR restaurant of the future will be first and foremost a technology company: end-to-end automation (or autonomy) will be built in from day one, and digitization will not be just an addition to existing outdated and complex processes. . Technology will be a key driver for creating new pathways for true innovation. With technology at the core, delivery and digitization will become an integral part of a restaurant’s business model, leading to much better service, customer experience and ultimately revenue.
How do you define “culinary engineering” and its role in the products you produce and the direction REMY Robotics is heading in?
When we started creating food for robots, we realized that our approach was unique and there was no single word to describe how we do it. So we created a new term to describe it: culinary engineering. It is a new discipline that maximizes the main advantage of using robots: precision. It combines culinary creativity, food science, food engineering, food design, and process engineering. It looks at the world of cooking as a whole.
Food for robots should be designed around them. The traditional aspects of a recipe, as well as how to check if the food has been cooked properly, have to be broken down into science and data, so we created a completely new methodology to turn what comes naturally to humans into formulas, algorithms, and digital recipes.
We have developed a variety of recipes: from asparagus to focaccia Za’atar, xia long bao, truffle poppy seed and cheese, gulab jamun, and hundreds of other dishes. We plan to grow even more, creating more variety, focusing on improving our quality even more – with more precision from robots and more creativity from our chefs.