Sony – creating the future of food

[_J.G.M_]

Sony is known for gaming and imaging and sensing, and now we are exploring the world of gastronomy. Here’s everything you need to know about our Gastronomy Flagship Project.

How the Gastronomy Flagship Project came to fruition.

Sony is committed to creating AI that unleashes human imagination and creativity, and what better place to do that than in the kitchen?

The Gastronomy Flagship Project has two main goals, all with an eye on health and environmental sustainability:

1. Develop robotics that can help chefs in the kitchen make great food.
2. Develop an AI app that will enable chefs to push boundaries and expand their culinary palettes into tastes that people have never experienced before.

A prototype of the app’s graphical user interface (GUI) was showcased at Madrid Fusión 2020, one of the world’s leading gastronomy events.

To demonstrate how the team is innovating cooking methods and equipment, the concept movie “AI X ROBOTICS X COOKING” is available to watch below:

Recipes that create, rather than recreate.

Recipes have always been about reproducing a dish. The Gastronomy Flagship Project is striving to give life to dishes and tastes that nobody has ever tried before, using the power of AI.

Here, ingredients serve as an array of data points, ranging from taste to aroma to molecular structure. The app analyses that data to form new pairings and culinary approaches to give chefs fresh inspiration, but it’s more than just another app on your device, it’s an active contributor in the kitchen. The app could suggest ingredient pairings, control potential Chef Assisting Cooking Robots of the future, and more.

Is Sony’s recipe-creation app whetting appetites?

The Gastronomy Flagship Project was a real success at Madrid Fusión 2020, with chefs and industry experts in the audience pulling out their phones to record our GUI prototype.

Not only did we present ideas you wouldn’t normally find on a menu – think sea urchin meets cheese meets chocolate – but we made the app navigation feel organic. Kitchens are hugely collaborative environments, and this app sets out to capture that, forgoing linear lists for three-dimensional spaces in which the ingredients float – almost like what you would imagine is happening inside a chef’s mind. The centrepiece for the chef’s dish sits right in the middle, with good pairings hovering in the vicinity, and not-so-tasty pairings blurred out in the background.

Everything in the app sways slightly, inviting users to interact and create.

Whilst the app is just a prototype in its current state, it is already evolving following the conversations had at Madrid Fusión 2020. Creating futuristic flavours isn’t the only intention either – we are using our resources to improve health through better dietary habits, address potential food shortages in the future, and find solutions to sustainability issues.

The future of food looks incredible. Are you excited?

This article has been adapted from a piece on Sony.net. The original can be found here: https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/design/stories/aigastronomy/