Cooking! A topic that has been the muse of so many people around the globe during the pandemic-driven lockdown. Our social media channels must have witnessed a deluge of posts from all the creative-yet-amateur people who must have tried their hand at cooking to beat the boredom at home. Veggies, juices, gravies, salads, bacon, lasagna, and what not! Even in your friend circles, you would have had at least one aficionado of food, who would have challenged himself or herself on culinary skills. No surprises, if that one person is yourself. And why not? Cooking is an activity that entices all kinds of people at some stage of life. The sound of sizzling oil, the sight of riotous colors in a bowl, and the aroma of the most exotic spices are enough to enthrall any food lover.
However, the phobia of cooking – technically called “Mageirocophobia” – is very much existent too. Though I could not discover any piece of statistic to claim what fraction of the population suffers from the phobia, I am sure that there are people who are fond of lip-smacking meals but are afraid of cooking instantly-spitting food items that can terrorize the most impotent of taste buds. I have a few friends who were contacted by the Devil for sharing the torturous recipes that would be capable of punishing most sinful souls in the underworld.
Just kidding! Jokes apart, people often feel intimidated about entering the kitchen because they have limited knowledge of how a meal must be prepared. They are unsure of the proportion of spices and ingredients that must go into making a perfect recipe for success. And this keeps them away from the sanctimonious realm of kitchen, where the smoke and the chaos in oil is supposed to give birth to something delicious and memorable.
How do we help these people who want to learn cooking and are unable to muster the courage for making mistakes? How do we ensure that thousands (can be an understatement) of such people have a mentor with them at all times, ready to lend a helping hand while in the kitchen? Yes, we do have YouTube videos that promise to stand beside the amateur chefs (should I call them ‘chef’?) and teach everything step by step. And yet, we don’t have any wonderful chef who has claimed YouTube to be his or her teacher. This is where we need some futuristic solution that can do the handholding for the people passionate to cook, but not interested to spoil the broth. What can help? What can be the ultimate savior of all such people?
The answer lies is Enhanced Reality, which is to say Augmented and Virtual Reality. This is going to be the ultimate teacher of culinary skills to people. Yes, the technology that gives you an amazing experience in the world of gaming and makes you follow a Pokemon on the roads, will come to the rescue of the wilful students in the kitchen. If you are one of those, then it’s time to don your chef’s hat and get a smart eye-gear to enable Augmented Reality. AI in cooking has never been so lip-smacking delicious!
Voice Assistant for Pantry Management
Let’s get started. So what do we mean by AR in cooking or AI in cooking? Well, it’s simple. Imagine a person, Alex, who wants to prepare some amazing white sauce pasta for his girlfriend. He wants to give her a surprise by preparing the pasta with his own hands, without actually making a mockery of the recipe. He knows nothing of how to start and what all to fetch for impressing her beloved. The next thing he does is run to his Voice Assistant for help. Standing wherever he is, he just speaks out, “Hey buddy, I need to make white sauce pasta. And it has to be yummy, nothing less than excellent, please. Can you please quickly be my guardian angel?” The voice assistant confirms its availability for a tutorial and swiftly connects with the Pantry Management System of the house to check for the available inventory. Out of all the required ingredients, the Pantry Management System discovers that there is not enough stock of butter, milk, and oil at home. Voila! Time to a quick purchase!
With Alex having just a few hours before his girlfriend arrives, he gives a green signal to the system to autonomously order everything required and get it delivered within an hour. Alex needs to get fresh, groom himself, and look his best for the big day. So, anyways an hour is what he can afford to give away to the Autonomous Pantry Manager to sort out everything. In that one hour, the Pantry Management System checks for the nearest locations from where the ingredients can be procured, without crossing the 1-hour limit. The orders are placed with the connected grocery outlets and confirmation from them is awaited.
By the next 15 minutes, the grocery outlets share a confirmation that the consignments are ready for pick up. The smart Pantry Management System dispatches a drone to collect the items from the outlets.
Drone for swift service
Alex’s drone receives the order from the system and checks for the geographical coordinates of the grocery outlets. It calculates the shortest path covering all the outlets using Shortest Path Algorithm and takes off into the air. The next thing the Pantry Management System knows is that the drone visits each grocery outlet and beams a notification of arrival, and the order number at the store, and gets the package handed over for an aerial pickup. A confirmation of payment using Near Field Communication and its storage on the blockchain network completes the order process. The smart drone covers all the stores and fetches the ingredients at Alex’s doorstep, while also sending a notification to Alex informing its arrival. The Pantry Management System is happy and it passes the baton to the voice assistant.
Here comes the Teacher!
By the time Alex gets finely groomed and gets the ingredients inside the kitchen, the AR Smart Glass has already received its commands and has already fetched the stepwise recipe of white sauce pasta from the web. Next, Alex puts on the AR Smart Glass and says, “Let’s begin.”
The AR Smart Glass shows on its display, “Guiding on white sauce pasta recipe”. Alex points his smart glass at the ingredients available on the kitchen countertop and a micro camera placed on the smart glass identifies the ingredients placed before it. Okay, this sounds good till now. However, now the real magic begins. The AR Smart Glass displays before Alex’s eyes the steps to make a perfect white sauce pasta dish. The graphics being projected by the Augmented Reality glass point towards the pan and the stove, and shows how to light the stove. Next, it asks Alex to put some butter in the pan. Not knowing the right quantity, Alex simply faces the butter package, and the Smart glass shows where to slice it using a knife so that only the required amount of butter is taken. Next, Alex needs to put some spices and does not know which one must go first. He does not know how oregano looks like, and which one out of the available spices is oregano. So, again he points the smart glass towards the ingredients, and the AR graphics point at the bowl containing oregano. And so on. Alex keeps on adding the ingredients and performing the cooking process as advised step by step by the AR Smart Glass. Looking at the color of the broth and the texture of the pasta, the image analytics algorithms keep a tab on how much is the pasta cooked and when Alex must take down the pan from the stove.
Social Media Integration on Consent Economy
Since the AR Smart Glass already has stepwise development of the dish, it asks Alex’s permission to share a video or pictorial story of his amazing cooking experience on the integrated social media handles. Alex declines the video upload since it would be a little too long and boring. He chooses the images that must go by just swiping left or right in the air, while the gesture analytics on the Smart Glass comes into play. The chosen images are posted on the chosen social media platforms with the relevant and prevalent hashtags embedded autonomously by the smart social media integration system. The hashtags related to the image, i.e. on food, are searched and the ones having the highest followers or engagements are used. The only catch – the social media posts will go only after Alex’s girlfriend has arrived, lest the surprise gets revealed to her even before she reaches Alex’s home.
The Big Date!
Just before Alex’s girlfriend is supposed to arrive, the Smart Ambiance System adjusts the room temperature, the fragrance, and the lighting to suit a romantic date. The Smart Kitchen System also keeps a track of the temperature of the white sauce pasta and its freshness. Alex just cannot wait for his girlfriend to arrive and be pleasantly surprised by the sight of the delicious pasta.
AI-driven Culinary Science Training
Though the application of AR/VR seems to have helped only Alex here, yet the use case has the potential of sending waves of change in the hotel management education. Chefs no longer need to worry about learning a large number of recipes by heart. Rather they can rely on AR Smart Glass for learning a new recipe on the spot and prepare it meticulously on the go. Even in the hotel management institutes, we may not need the physical presence of teachers, as the AR Smart Glass can act as virtual teachers and can repeat the steps over and over again, without getting angry. This will save costs for the culinary science institutes and will also provide an enhanced experience for the students.
In a nutshell
Doesn’t this sound like an awesome idea? Augmented Reality assisting an amateur chef with the cooking of the best recipes? Yes, surely it does! And it will be a reality someday soon. We already have AR-driven systems in place that help the technicians to repair machines in the smart factories using AR-enabled headsets. We already have VR-headsets that give an awesome experience to the gamers. An application of the same in culinary skills does not sound impossible. And with the entire ecosystem of voice assistants, AR-enabled smart glass, smart kitchen system, drones, and smart pantry management systems integrated, the world of culinary science is certain to get transformed for the better.
This is the next big thing. Watch out for it to arrive soon!
