Scalable automated cooking system having small footprint and reduced labor cost

Abstract

An automatic cooking system includes a computer system that stores recipes, cooking stations each comprising a cooking container that can cook food ingredients therein to produce a first cooked food, wherein the computer system can assign and schedule a plurality of dishes to be cooked at the cooking stations, storage containers configured to hold food ingredients, mini vehicles each carrying transport containers configured to hold the food ingredients, wherein the computer system can control at least some of movements of the mini vehicles in accordance to the recipes, a loading apparatus configured to load food ingredients from the storage stations to the transport containers on the mini vehicles, and an unloading apparatus that can transfer food ingredients from the transport containers on the mini vehicles to the cooking container at one of the cooking stations.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0001]The present application relates to cooking system, and specifically to cooking method and equipment capable of automatically delivering food ingredients.[0002]Considerable amount of research and experiments have been conducted on automating cooking. A conventional cook apparatus includes a full set of storage containers positioned above each cooking container. A drawback of conventional cook apparatus is it requires too many storage containers for each cooking container, which takes too much space in a kitchen. For example, a kitchen in a common fast food restaurant may include dozens of storage containers. The problem becomes even worse when there are multiple cooking containers in a kitchen; the kitchen must have large space to host such systems with multi-cooking containers. In addition, subdividing a same ingredient into more than one storage containers disallows sharing by different cooking containers.[0003]U.S. Pat. No. 4,919,950 teaches an aut...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present invention is an automated cooking system that can deliver ingredients to a cooking apparatus without the need for stationary storage containers or moving the cooking apparatus close to storage containers. The system can be flexible to different types of ingredients and recipes, reducing food waste and space requirements. It is particularly useful for large kitchens in restaurants, cafeterias, and companies. The technical effects of the patent text are improved efficiency, flexibility, space and labor cost savings, and reduced food printing and labor expenses.

Problems solved by technology

A drawback of conventional cook apparatus is it requires too many storage containers for each cooking container, which takes too much space in a kitchen.

The problem becomes even worse when there are multiple cooking containers in a kitchen; the kitchen must have large space to host such systems with multi-cooking containers.

In addition, subdividing a same ingredient into more than one storage containers disallows sharing by different cooking containers.

One disadvantage of this approach is that the cooking containers and the devices connected with cooking containers can be big and heavy so moving these can require a lot of space and a lot of power.

Also, if the heaters are connected with the cooking containers, then moving the heaters together can create a fire hazard.

Moreover, the technique works best only if all food ingredients may be ordered along the “pre-determined path”, so that the order of their dispensing into the cooking container may not be different for different dishes in the menu.

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