Introducing Chef+: Our Most Advanced Meal Assembly Robot Yet

What is Chef+?

Chef+ is our most advanced AI-enabled flexible meal assembly robot designed for food manufacturing facilities. 

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Food manufacturers face critical operational constraints—limited production floor space that restricts equipment placement, frequent ingredient refills that disrupt workflow efficiency, and stringent food safety and cleanability requirements. We engineered the Chef+ robot to tackle these pain points.

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Built on insights from over 80 million servings in production and several years of customer feedback, Chef+ delivers enhanced reliability, 2x ingredient capacity, a reduced footprint, improved food safety, and enhanced usability and performance. 

How does Chef+ deliver these improvements?

Drawing from over 100,000 production hours, Chef+ offers significant advancements in six key areas.

1. Doubled ingredient capacity

The Chef+ robot accommodates larger ingredient volumes, significantly extending time between refills. This helps reduce the burden on the refill runner as they need to load ingredients less frequently, reducing labor touchpoints and thereby increasing productivity. As a result, a refill runner can replenish ingredients for a larger number of workers and robots. We’ve achieved this through:

• 2x larger ingredient containers: Chef+ pans measure twice the volume of previous models, which is particularly beneficial for low-density, voluminous ingredients like leafy greens and large portion deposits like pasta.

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2. Reduced footprint

Despite a doubled ingredient capacity, the Chef+ robot has the same footprint as a worker. This thinner design allows facilities to deploy robots in tight spaces and place two production lines back-to-back, optimizing valuable floor space—a critical advantage for space-constrained manufacturing facilities.

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3. Enhanced reliability

Drawing from extensive runtime at customer facilities, Chef+ ensures higher uptime and consistent performance in physically challenging cold rooms. Key reliability upgrades include: 

• Integrated electrical enclosures and reduced exposed wiring: The two back posts of the Chef+ frame, previously hollow tubes, now house all wiring in sealed enclosures. This eliminates exposed wiring, reduces common failure points, and significantly increases mean time between failures (MTBF).
• IP cameras: Chef+ features IP cameras, which are more reliable than USB-C cameras in cold production environments.
• Integrated water separator: Chef+ features an integrated water separator that captures excess moisture in the pneumatic tubes, ensuring the air remains completely dry. 
• Improved Wi-Fi connectivity: Chef+ leverages an array of dome antennas to enhance internet performance. 

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4. Advanced food safety

The Chef+ design prioritizes cleanliness and hygiene to meet strict food manufacturing standards. We’ve achieved this through:

• An angle-iron frame: The Chef+ frame replaces the two front closed tubes with open angle iron. This makes surfaces easier to clean and eliminates hidden crevices where residue can accumulate, helping manufacturers meet strict food safety and sanitation standards.

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5. Improved usability

Chef+ features several new functionalities that improve usability and reduce setup and changeover time. These improvements include:

• Slide-in ingredient pans: Chef+ pans slide easily into the robot with an integrated locking mechanism, eliminating the need for line workers to lift and place heavy pans of food. This speeds up refills, reduces physical strain, and keeps pans securely locked during operation.
• P-CAP touchscreen: The Chef+ HMI screen uses an electrode grid to detect touch through changes in an electrostatic field. This makes it easier to use with gloves, improving user experience in cold production environments.
• Daisy-chain power configuration: Manufacturers can connect several Chef+ robots to a single ceiling power source, eliminating the need for individual electricity lines for each robot. This simplifies facility installation and helps manufacturers scale operations more flexibly.
• Integrated handle: Chef+ includes a handle that makes the robot easier to move around the production floor during changeovers.
• Self-leveling feet: Workers can adjust a robot’s feet with a single button, eliminating the need for manual tools and wrenches during line changeovers.

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6. Enhanced performance

Chef+ robots deliver superior performance through significant hardware upgrades:

• CPU and GPU processing: Increased computing power enables real-time, more accurate adaptation to variable ingredients, thereby improving portion consistency and yield rates.
• Three-camera vision system: The robot features three cameras, allowing for more accurate conveyor and tray tracking as well as precise ingredient placement.

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What’s next?

The Chef+ robot has been through rigorous testing in our cold room facility and is already running in production at several Chef customer sites. We’re excited to make Chef+ available to all food manufacturers starting today.

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If you’re looking to upgrade your food manufacturing automation systems, scale up production capacity, or improve labor productivity, we’d love to talk. Contact us to discuss how the Chef+ robot can help solve your specific production challenges.