Cooking Robot

[Anchor Lead]

Wouldn't you like someone else to cook for you sometimes? In fact, the chore of cooking has recently met technology to produce cutting-edge kitchen appliances and robots capable of whipping out meals.

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When a menu item is selected, the dish is served right away. Is this possible only in the movies or could this also happen right here in real life? This is a beer brewing machine produced by a Korean household appliance company. Just add water and an ingredient capsule. Two weeks later you have your beer. Temperature and pressure just right for fermentation and aging are set automatically and the brewing process can be checked on your smartphone on a real-time basis.

[Soundbite] Oh Eun-sook(Home Appliance and Air Solution Business HQ, LG Electronics) : "It controls optimum temperature, pressure and time for each beer recipe. The fermentation algorithm is the key technology."

This is a restaurant in Boston, started by MIT graduates. The kitchen is run by robots. A human puts in the ingredients and seven rotating frying pans start cooking flawlessly. Customers have seven stir-fried rice dishes to choose from. A dish is completed in just three minutes and these robot cooks can make up to 200 dishes per hour.

[Soundbite] Lee Kyung-hyun(Dir., Korea Insight Institute) : "It's experimental, but its future market potential is high as there are diverse cuisines."

The domestic market for "food tech", which injects high tech advancements into the food industry, is worth about 200 trillion won. This new tech-enhanced culinary trend may bring great changes to food production and distribution.