Food at college gets high-tech boost with first robotic kitchen in university setting
Hungry students at Florida International University (FIU) near Miami are being fed by a robot these days.
"Beastro" – yes, it has a name – is the first robotic kitchen in the country to be used in a university setting, according to FIU. (See the video at the top of this article, and another one down below.)
On a recent morning at the Ernest R. Graham University Center on FIU's flagship campus, Beastro prepared chicken teriyaki for Jocelyn Hernandez, 22, a senior studying natural and applied sciences, as Fox News Digital watched and filmed. Soon after, Beastro was busy making a cheese omelet for Pablo Reyes, 20, a junior biomedical engineering student.
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Within minutes, the students' food was prepared, cooked and ready to be served.
Hernandez and Reyes are just some of the 600 students whom Beastro feeds daily, chef Denisse Castillo told Fox News Digital. Castillo is FIU's senior director of residential dining.
"I'm Beastro's boss," she said.
Beastro is the creation of Kitchen Robotics, which has offices in Israel and Miami Lakes, about 16 miles from FIU's Modesto A. Maidique Campus.
Ofer Zinger, co-founder of Kitchen Robotics, said Beastro is a "robotic automated kitchen."
"The key thing there is that we are capable of cooking everything that you would normally use pots to cook with," Zinger told Fox News Digital.
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"We are not doing hamburgers and we are not doing pizza. But everything that we traditionally use a pot to cook with, we are capable of doing."
Beastro can make, among other dishes, pasta bolognese, stir fries, chicken salad and omelets.
"We are not dedicated to a certain cuisine," Zinger said.
Here's how it works.
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Students place their orders at one of two kiosks in front of the glass partition where they can watch Beastro make their food on one of the four induction plates.
At any given time, one or more of the plates are in use to cook the meals.
After the order is placed, students are given an order number and receive a text notification once their food is ready.
Students can follow the status of their orders from a TV monitor on the wall, or just watch Beastro at work.
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Once the food is ready, a robot arm removes the cooking pot from the induction plate and drops it onto a slide-like tray that sends it to a waiting member of the kitchen staff.
That staffer then transfers the dish onto a plate and hands it to the students.
Beastro also self-cleans, washing its pans immediately after the food is plated.
The robot chef, which made its debut earlier this year, takes its orders from Castillo, who determines what meals Beastro will make.
Recipes are programmed by Castillo and her team.
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"Technically, we create the food for Beastro," Castillo said.
There are two rows of feeder tubes that Beastro uses to make each meal. The top row can contain up to 12 solid foods, while the bottom row holds as many as 11 different liquids.
"Whatever you choose to define in those feeders basically defines the limitations of your kitchen space that day," Zinger said.
Initially, it was a challenge, Castillo admitted.
"Beastro is telling us when we need to feed it, so if we're out of pasta, it will tell you, 'I'm out of pasta,' and it will not continue cooking," she said.
"And if you put the food in a wrong feeder, it will tell you, 'Look, you're asking me for chicken, but you have pasta.'"
But once she got used to it, Castillo became quite fond of Beastro, she said.
"It was something exciting for me, trying something new that nobody [else has]," Castillo said.
If there were concerns that Beastro would take jobs away from humans, Castillo and Zinger don't see that as a worry.
It's the opposite at FIU, Castillo said.
"We have more labor now," she said.
Automation "creates consistency" that helps businesses prosper, Zinger said.
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"Machines make less mistakes," he said.
Beastro also seems to be boosting FIU's profile.
FIU leads the state and is No. 11 nationally for best college food in America, according to the website Niche, which ranks colleges on a range of topics.
That's a three-spot increase from the previous rankings.
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Beastro is unique to FIU for now — but Zinger hopes it will catch on at other universities and commercial kitchens throughout the country.
"We are looking to scale and we are ready to scale," Zinger said.