The fact that some people around the globe are facing hunger, while the others are indulging themselves with a humongous amount of food reflects that our source is not appropriately managed. This concern came to me when I attended parties, or when I went to an 'All You Can Eat' restaurants where people straight up throw edible foods to the garbage cans. It pains me considering that people in some poor countries are literally suffering to death for not being able to fill their stomachs. When I surfed on Google, I found mind-blowing facts about food wasting that our generation should be ashamed of. Roughly one-third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year (approx. 1.3 billion tones) gets lost or wasted. UN estimates that wasted food can feed an extra 3 billion people which exceed the number of people who face food scarcity. The point is, we grow enough food, but our food management system is way too inefficient. Food waste is a climate change issue as well, as it generates 3.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases.
Furthermore, there are many indirect consequences such as exacerbating biodiversity loss, degrading soils, destroying ocean, depleting fish stocks, and so on. We can contribute individually to fixing these problems with only a small act, by not wasting our food. But It is not as easy as it sounds. Most people, usually in a developed country, often overestimate their daily calory needs. Restaurant, big supermarket chains, even small food shops also provide food way more than the demands backed with the fear of losing profit. The imperfection of human hands also results in wasted products in the production lines and restaurants. I can understand, from the perspective of the owner, it is better to provide way more than providing less. One more policy that also contributes to food wasting is they would instead throw an unfit product rather than to offer unpresentable products to customers. If it is not fixed soon, Our earth will probably run out its resources in the near future. I am majoring mechanical engineering specified in robotics. At first glance, It may seem it is not related at all to the problems that I have mentioned before. But robotics is actually way broader that one may think. And I somehow have the passion for cooking as well. By combining the two of my interests, I can think (imagine more precisely) several abstract hypothetical ideas that may help reducing food wasting toward a sustainable society.
First, I would like to propose a smart restaurant system which may help reducing food wasting. In a restaurant, every ingredient should be measured precisely to create a perfect dish. But due to the limitation of time and high demands from customers, a chef has to work really fast and efficient. Mostly, they will have no time to measure every ingredient precisely one by one. One small mistake on the components may ruin the taste of the whole food, and it will likely end up in a garbage can. The cooking technique is essential as well, as it is the core of creating a delicious dish. Professional chef like Gordon Ramsay relies more on his experience which makes him able to offer perfection in every dishes He makes. However, when working in a large restaurant, even professional chefs have only two hands which won't be sufficient to complete all the cooking process alone. So professional chefs need chef assistants, and usually, each chef assistants is tasked into a specific job like cutting the vegetable, preparing the meat, boiling the pasta, grilling the chicken and so on. So they work as a team. However, most of the mistakes are made by the chef assistants who are less experienced than the chef. The reason why we often see Gordon Ramsay bursts out his anger was the imperfection done by his chef assistants, and each flaw of human's handy works contribute to wasting food.
The smart restaurant system is coupled with a data analyst system and automation line. The automation line is comprised of two parts. One is task executing robot which will be in the form of robot arms, robots that can emulate a professional chef's handy works, functions to accomplish a specific small task such as cutting vegetable, preparing meat, etc. With the help of this chef assistant robot, we can minimize the error due to human imperfection and subsequently, reduce food wasting Another one is a delivery system which transports the ingredients from storage rooms to each task executing robots.
Each task executing robot is equipped with a bunch of cooking technique data which can be generated by the help of machine learning and artificial intelligence to mimic a real chef movement. And the delivery system will work pretty much the same as the one that Amazon has in their storage room. With this system, we need no one but only the head chef who controls and gives commands to the robot via a user interface. Not only this system costs less than a conventional restaurant, but it also helps to save our world by reducing the food wasted. I can't discuss much about the technical issues here, as I am talking about a hypothetical non-existent technology. The restaurant should also have some sort of data analyst system which helps them to estimate the quantity of raw ingredients they need to provide so that small to no amount of food will be wasted. The estimation may come from the data of how much they made sales on the previous days, taking account several factors that might affect the transactions such as annual event, holidays, peak hours and etc. Over a period of time, the estimation becomes more accurate as it collects more and more data.
Nowadays, even controlling robot arms to draw a circle is a strenuous work, let alone copying sophisticated moves of a professional chef. This idea just popped out of my head when I was reading an article about food wasting. It may seem so unrealistic at this moment, but as what my professor said, an engineer or a scientist has the right to imagine the most ridiculous idea that ever exists. Our imagination shouldn't be limited to the current science law as science is evolving as well. Let your imagination takes you wherever you want to and then find a way to accomplish that ;).
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