Re:A Robot Makes a Mean Caesar Salad, but Will It Cost Jobs?
by setr on Monday October 09, 2017 @12:31PM
(#15435261)
You don't actually have to replicate the interaction though, you just need to identify the particular range of smells that people accept, and have the machine capable of detecting it.
Generating a brand new style of good coffee might need the interaction though
Re:A Robot Makes a Mean Caesar Salad, but Will It Cost Jobs?
by freeflight on Tuesday October 10, 2017 @05:24AM
(#15440473)
But different people are accepting of different tastes and even those change with age, what people accept as nice smelling/tasting food can be quite subjective because the very same smell can be overpowering to some while appealing to others.
How to calibrate a sensor for something like that on a per user basis? I don't know, but apparently it's possible because "electronic noses" do exist but are mostly used in laboratory settings, probably on account of their price.
There's also a reason why we still use pigs and dogs for work that require good smelling senses, like search&rescue or truffle foraging. Training these animals is very expensive, but it still seems to be the cheaper option compared to building "smellobots", so I doubt smelling sensor are far enough along to be put into a ton of kitchen bots at small cost.
Replicating this with electrical sensors is a pretty complex task we still haven't managed to get working, after all we are not only talking about replicating the sense of taste but also the sense of smelling and how they interact with each other.