Modeling the Automation Level of Cyber-Physical Systems Designed for Food Preparation

With the increased awareness around environmental, health, and quality-of-life benefits freshly prepared food brings, a new wave of cyber-physical system applications in the food-preparation robotics sector has emerged. These food-preparation robots are cyber-physical systems with widely varying capabilities, leveraging the recent rise in food-related content shared online (e.g., videos, recipes, and images). However, currently, there is no objective, systematic framework for analyzing their capabilities in an application-relevant manner. Therefore, we present a novel model for analyzing the automation level of food-preparation robots. Our model takes into account food preparation steps and is suitable for analyzing advancements in both current and future food-preparation robots. We analyze food preparation robots developed to date and discuss future challenges in autonomous food preparation.