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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Julia

Here are the Kitchen Robots We Saw at CES & Food Tech Live 2021

One thing I miss most about heading to Vegas every January for CES is walking the basement of the Sands convention center. There, in the startup area known as Eureka Park, I’ll wander for hours and get lost amongst thousands of exhibitors in search of a few undiscovered food tech gems.

I usually find a few and, since we’re talking CES, they sometimes come in the form of a food robot.

From there, I usually head across the street to Treasure Island where The Spoon has its own product showcase during CES week called Food Tech Live, where I can also get my fill of food robots while also doing such things as eating a cookie with my face on it.

While both CES and Food Tech Live didn’t take place in person in Sin City this year, that doesn’t mean there weren’t some cool food robots to check out at their virtual versions last week. Below is our roundup of home food robots I found at virtual CES and The Spoon’s annual first-of-the-year product showcase, Food Tech Live.

Moley Robotic Kitchen

Since 2015, the Moley robotic kitchen has captured the imagination of the tech journalists and robotics industry with its robot chef concept that can that can prepare full meals from prep to cook to clean up with a pair of articulating robot arms.

And while we’ve yet to actually see the Moley cook a full meal from start to finish, the system’s inventor told The Spoon that it’s finally on sale and will find its first home in 2021. The company, which had a virtual booth at CES 2021 and debuted a bunch of new highlight videos, will sell both a home and pro version of its robotic kitchen. Prices for the fully robotic kitchen will be about $335 thousand.

The Moley Robotic Kitchen System at CES 2021

Oliver

Else Labs Oliver is a single-pot cooking robot that dispenses fresh ingredients and automates the cooking process with the help of temperature sensing and machine vision capabilities.

Else Labs, which went on sale via Indiegogo last fall, was on display at Food Tech Live last week. The product’s inventor and company CEO Khalid Aboujassoum says the major difference between Oliver and other guided cooking appliances on the market is Oliver pretty much handles the entire cooking process for you.

“The Oliver can do unattended stovetop cooking,” Aboujassoum told me last fall when the product went on sale.

Oliver, the smart cooking robot

iWonderCook

The iWonderCook is a automated cooking machine that cooks one-pot meals. The meals are provided in the form of the company’s own meal kit service, which the user orders through the device’s touchscreen. From there, as can be seen in the video below, the user inserts a bowl, embeds the food “cartridge”, and then adjusts the amount of oil and water needed.

I haven’t gotten a chance to see the iWondercook in action or taste the food, I will say is the product’s reliance on its own meal kits might be a turn-off for some users.

iWONDERCOOK robotic chef does the cooking for you.

Yo-Kai Express Takumi

Technically the new Yo-Kai Express Takumi home ramen machine is something closer to a Keurig for food than a food robot, it’s worth looking at this machine given the company’s smart vending roots.

The Takumi, which debuted at Food Tech Live last week, follows Yo-Kai’s move into the home market with its home delivery service. The Takumi takes the frozen ramen bowls, which are centrally produced in Yo-Kai’s California facilities, and steams and reconstitutes the ramen in just a few minutes.

The company has plans to not only to start selling ramen to users in the office and home, but on the go with an autonomous ramen delivery cart.

Day With Yo Kai Final

Samsung Bot Handy

Samsung announced a trio of home robots aimed at helping humans around the house. The one that was most interesting when it comes to lending a hand in the kitchen was Bot Handy, a mobile bot with large articulating hand that can help with anything from pouring a glass of wine to doing the dishes.

It’s worth noting that Samsung – like many big consumer electronics brands – has a history of showing off cool new product prototypes at CES that are more conceptual than anything close to actually coming to market, including last year’s they showed off a Moley-kitchen style robot system. Let’s hope the Bot Handy is something the company delivers on.

Julia

The Julia is another single-pot home cooking robot that allows the user to set it and forget it for pretty much an entire meal. The Julia is made by a Nymble, an Indian-based startup with plans to start selling the product in 2021. Nymble CEO Raghav Gupta showed off the product at Food Tech Live, told us that they are expanding their alpha trial program in the United States in February.

ColdSnap

Like the Takumi, the ColdSnap isn’t quite a full-fledged food robot, but something closer to a Bartesian style automated appliance that makes cold ice cream (as well as frozen margaritas and smoothies). While we weren’t able to get our hands on the ColdSnap, the company gave CNET a hands-on preview of the appliance and the editors were impressed. The appliance, which is going to a fairly spending $500-1,000, reminds me of the Wim fro-yo appliance that never made it to market after an acqui-hire of the founding by Walmart.

Nymble Eyes 2021 Launch For Its Home Cooking Robot

Looking for a little help in the kitchen? Maybe Julia could help.

No, Julia isn’t your neighbor or a chef matched with you through some online marketplace. In fact, Julia isn’t a person at all.

What Julia is is a robot. A cooking robot.

Developed by an India-based startup called Nymble, Julia creates single pot meals using spice and ingredients chambers that dispense food into the cooking bowl, where a robotic arm mixes the meal within the pot. All of this is monitored by a built-in camera.

You can see a video of Julia cooking rice here:

Fried Rice - Julia in-built camera footage

The camera does more than just capture footage. It’s how Julia becomes a better cook.

“The camera provides us with a thermal image of the food which basically represents the temperature of every pixel in the image,” said Raghav Gupta, CEO of Nymble.

Julia uses precise measurements of temperature and location to closely regulate the heat of the food. It also uses the data to create a better quality cook over time.

“It helps us cook food with a repeatable and consistent quality irrespective of the nature and size of ingredient, geography and other external factors,” said Gupta.

Early on, Julia’s programmers hard coded their cook times for specific intervals depending on the recipe. Over time they’ve gathered more data from the camera and heat sensors, and this has helped Julia become of a feedback driven system. The developer team has also created tools for non-technical users, including a “recipe visualizer” that uses camera and sensor data to help create recipes.

While all this technical work is impressive, it remains to be seen if consumers actually want a cooking robot. It’s easy to envision most of us welcoming a high-end cooking bot like that from Moley, Samsung or Sony, but these concepts are still years off from the mass market. And while there have been systems similar in concept to the Julia, the Sereneti never shipped a finished product and Else Labs’ Oliver has yet to ship.

The only cooking bot that’s sold at volume is the Rotimatic from Zimplistic, which is nearing 100 thousand total units in the field. However, the Rotimatic – a unitasker that spits out flatbread over and over – is a much different type of device than the more complex Julia.

In short, since there hasn’t been a product in the market similar to Julia, it’s hard to say if consumers will embrace the idea. My guess is its success will depend on how well it works and how useful it is and whether it makes consumer lives easier. I am particularly curious about how well these systems with pre-loaded ingredient chambers work and if they are easy to clean.

Nymble will try to figure all of this out for themselves as it eyes a 2021 launch. To help do that, the company recently finished some field tests for Julia and is in the process of rolling out additional prototypes to alpha testers in its home market of India (apply here!).

Hopefully Nymble – and we – should know soon.

CES 2020: Julia is an All-in-One, Self-Cleaning Guided Cooking Machine

CookingPal debuted Julia, its connected countertop cooking device, at CES yesterday — though to call it simply a cooking device is a bit of an understatement. Julia is akin to a Thermomix, with 10 culinary functions that include weigh, chop, knead, mix, cook and steam. The device also comes with its own guided cooking system.

The brains of Julia is its Smart Kitchen Hub, which is an accompanying tablet with an 8.9 inch screen that offers step-by-step guided video recipes, recipe adjustment based on the number of people eating or preferences, and a built-in camera and computer vision to recognize food and suggest recipes. If you’re missing something, you can order ingredients for delivery straight from the device.

The Smart Kitchen Hub has a touchscreen as well as a large jog dial to control it. If your hands are too greasy or gummy from food prep, the Hub will respond to voice control as well.

Here are the Julia’s full specs:

Features – Smart Kitchen Appliance

  • Size: 440 x 310 x 370 mm, with a stainless steel 3L bowl
  • Scale: accurate to 5g
  • Motor: 10 speeds up to of 5200 RPM
  • Heating unit: cooks up to 130 degrees Celsius/265 degrees Fahrenheit
  • Modes: Chop, mix, blend, knead, weigh, boil, emulsify, steam, grind, grate, whisk and cook
  • Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.2 and Wi-Fi a/b/g/n (2.4GHz, 5GHz)
  • Cleaning and Care: Julia’s bowl is dishwasher safe or can self-clean by adding dish soap and water to the bowl and setting it to mixing mode

The whole point of the Julia is that the device can do most of the work so novice and time-pressed cooks can make actual meals and not just zap food in a microwave. All a user has to do is add ingredients when Julia says to; the machine does the rest. Julia even cleans itself (well, kinda, see specs above).

As mentioned earlier, Julia is similar to the Thermomix, which is wildly popular outside of the U.S. Thermomix released its latest iteration, the TM6, which also features guided cooking and a forthcoming collaboration with Drop for appliance control and grocery ordering. And while the TM6 is $1,500, the Julia, which CookingPal says will ship in Q3 of this year, will retail for less than $1,000.

CookingPal also said in its press announcement that it will be announcing more hardware in the coming months that work with its Smart Hub Platform, including a smart oven and smart pressure cooker.

This post has been updated to more accurately reflect the relationship between Thermomix and Drop.

Nymble Labs Raises Funding for Julia, the Countertop Cooking Robot

Nymble Labs announced yesterday that it has raised an undisclosed amount of pre-Series A money for its countertop cooking robot dubbed Julia. Investors in the round include WaterBridge Ventures, Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal and 021 Capital.

Inc42 reports that Bengaluru, India-based Nymble Labs combines robotics, machine learning and the internet of things to create the Julia. The device sits on a countertop and has different compartments for various vegetables, grains, meats and more, and can make bowl or pan-based meals like curries, noodles and turf rice. Julia will come with at least 150 pre-loaded recipes on its app at launch, and will use a combination of sensors and a camera to ensure proper cooking.

The new funding will go towards finishing the development of the Julia, which Nymble aims to launch in the U.S. in 2020. No mention of price.

Nymble Labs had a booth at the Startup Showcase at CES last month (see picture above), but it wasn’t doing any live demos. What Nymble brought actually didn’t feel that far along, so it’s heartening to see that it was at least at a stage where they could attract investors.

The Julia isn’t alone in its automated cooking ambitions. Over in Croatia, GammaChef is building a similar countertop robot that stores, adds, mixes and cooks up ingredients automatically. Elsewhere in India, Zimplistic’s Rotimatic is a countertop flatbread-making robot that can automatically whip up rotis, tortillas, pizza crust and is arguably the most successful home food robot in the world right now.

While we love all this home robot proliferation, the typical kitchen is a zero sum game. There just isn’t room for all these devices unless you re-architect your kitchen to be all countertop space. There will be home cooking robot winners and losers, now we’ll have to see if Julia can justify a place in people’s homes.

If you’re into food robots, you should definitely come to our ArticulATE food robot and automation summit happening in San Francisco on April 16th!