1. Cooking with Robots:
Designing a Household System
Working in Open Environments
JST ERATO IGARASHI Design UI Project
Yuta Sugiura, Daisuke Sakamoto,
Anusha Withana, Masahiko Inami and Takeo Igarashi

2. Motivation
• Current Home electronics
• Still, most complex tasks are done by human.
Serving
Dishes
Cleaning Folding
clothes

3. Home Robots
• Robots are emerging to the home.
iRobot’s “Roomba”

4. Goals for Proposed System
• Robot should collaborate with users
– User instructs the robots
– User can access the work space and support
robots with difficult tasks
Preparing ingredients Cooking

5. Example – Cooking with Robots
• We designed household system that can
collaborate with human in an open environment

7. System Overview
• The prototype system has
• Three small mobile robots
• Controllable cooking heater
• PC
• Web camera

8. Highlights
• User support system
• Timeline based interface
• Small mobile robots
– Sharing same tools and space with human

9. Highlights
• User support system
• Timeline based interface
• Small mobile robots
– Sharing same tools and space with human

10. User Support System
• Preparing ingredients
• Adding visual maker
on plate for
recognition by system

11. Highlights
• User support system
• Timeline based interface
• Small mobile robots
– Sharing same tools and space with human

12. Timeline Based Interface
• Actions, Ingredients and Temperature are sequentially
controlled using timeline
• low level instructions are not necessary
Cooking timeline Temperature timeline
Ingredient’s
image

13. Highlights
• User support system
• Timeline based interface
• Small mobile robots
– Sharing same tools and space with human

14. Small Mobile Robots
• Low cost and safety
• It can be set up in the regular kitchen

15. Stirring robotSeasoning adding robotFood adding robot
Sharing Tools and Space
• Robots share tools and space with human
– Plates, spoon, seasoning bottles
– IH cooking heater
– Cooking table

17. Primary test
• One participant used the system
• He made miso-soup (Japanese soup)
• The system almost succeeded.
• Some of ingredients could not be correctly
dropped to the pot
• It was edible :P

18. Future Work
• We try to make other dishes
• Frying, Salad
• Other example of human robot collaboration
• laundry automation at home
• Gardening support (give water, give compost, weeding,
etc)
Collecting cloth in basket Wash FoldDry

19. Related Works
• Limited interaction with human
Okonomiyaki cooking robotNoodles cooking robot
(Japanese pizza)

20. Conclusion
• We presented a cooking robots system which,
1. can operate in an open environment
2. share the same tools with user
3. uses timeline based interface

21. Enjoy your meal…!!!
JST ERATO IGARASHI Design UI Project
Yuta Sugiura, Daisuke Sakamoto,
Anusha Withana, Masahiko Inami and Takeo Igarashi
Questions