A matter of taste
Something I really enjoy in my free time is cooking. I love exploring new recipes and flavors and the best part of it all is that I get to eat the results of my experimenting. That is why taste is one of my favorite senses and it's a sense that is very particular to creatures. Humans mostly use their sense of taste as a helpful guide while making and consuming food. While I really enjoy the cooking process, there are many people out there who don't have the time or desire to do so. It would be very helpful for those people if there were robots to take over the process for them.
One of these kinds of robots is the 'kitchen robot' developed by Moley Robotics. This robot can cook a multitude of recipes from scratch. All the owner needs to do is cut and measure the ingredients. The robot is only capable of following the recipe, so if you put the wrong proportion or ingredient in the container it will use it, which can result in some interesting dishes. That is why taste is very important in cooking, because if the robot could taste the dish during preparation it could have sensed it had made a mistake and maybe he could have fixed it.
R2-D-Chew might be the solution to the taste problem, however. This robot was taught to prepare an omelette with tomatoes by researchers at Cambridge University. They worked off the principle of 'taste as you go', where chefs continuously taste their dishes to make sure the flavors are balanced. To achieve this, they gave R2-D-Chew a salinity sensor to measure the level of saltiness of the dish. It could also sense when the ingredients weren't mixed enough or when it needed more ingredients like salt. This resulted in a few successful omelettes. The researchers think it might be possible for R2-D-Chew to help in the kitchen in the future.
A robot that can 'taste' saltiness is a step in the right direction for a true robot chef, but saltiness is not the only flavor that is important in cooking. Giving it the ability to measure the other flavors; teaching it what level of each flavor is desirable in a dish; and teaching it which flavors work well together would result in a robot chef that could give human chefs a run for their money.