Moley takes to Seedrs to crowdfund future kitchens with robotic chef arms
The notionof a kitchen with a built in robot chef capable of whipping up alobster bisqueat the push of a buttonsounds like something out of Futurama. But ittechnicallyexists at least as ademo prototype.UK startup Moley Robotics has been working on the concept for several years now, starting off in 2014 and showing off ademo unitlast year.
Of course its a very far cry from a concept prototypeto robust product commercialization, especially with a robotics project asambitious as this clearly is. Food preparation can be chaotic at the best of time. Throw in a pair of robotic armsand it sounds like a recipe for culinary creations to go right off the rails and all over the surfaces. But Moley clearly thinks otherwise and is now hoping to convince investors tobuy into its vision for the future of high end kitchens, envisaging a digital bank of recipes for the chef to work from and to which consumers could even contribute.
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Today itslaunched a crowdfunding campaign on theSeedrs equity platform with the aim of fundingthe next steps in its development process. Specifically its looking to raise 1 million, offering2.6 per cent equity, to fund the building of a complete industrial prototype of the robot kitchen comprising both the workstation, with its built in robot arms, and the various utensils the botwould need to make use of toprepare and cook food.
Thisfirst industrial prototype is intendedforthe European market. Moleysays its also starting workon designing theproduction model for the region, intendingfor thisto be installed in new build properties or via a kitchen upgrade to an existing property with a slated launch for the modelof2018. Albeit, as with any crowdfunding hardware project, never mind one as hugely ambitious as this, it pays to takeany such estimated timeframes with a generous measureof salt.
At the time of writing therobot kitchen campaign has already pulled inpledges of more than400,000 from over 40 investors, so theres evidently appetite for theconcept at least. Itremains to be seen how viable and versatile in practice Moleysrobot chef turns out to be.
Meanwhile, its not the only startup seeking to take some of the strain out of cooking witha robotic helping hand. Sereneti Kitchen, a TC hardware battlefield startup,showed offan automatic tool designed tohelp people cook back at CES 2015 Although at that point the robot could only stir, with the aim being to addadditional cooking mechanisms Again, it remains to be seen whether this chef bot will ever live to work under kitchen halogen but perhapsthere could be a far-off future ofTV shows where rival robot chefs battle it outBake-Off style.