“Ping Ping” Pork Barbecue Robot, Most Creative Idea Innovation of FIBO Students.
“Ping Ping, the Pork Barbecue Robot”, was designed and developed by Mr. Waritthorn Kongnoo, or Den, and Mr. Chawaphon Wachiraniramit, or Ai-Oun, third-year students at the Institute of Field Robotics (FIBO), King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT) who were inspired by a pork barbecue stall.
“We walk past a pork barbecue stall near our university just about every day and see the vendor constantly grilling and flipping pork skewers. Some days, when there were many orders, she had to flip the skewers multiple times before the pork was cooked, thus causing her customers to inevitably be forced to wait. So, we came up with an idea if a robot could help with the grilling because it would likely save her a lot of energy and also allow her to spend more time on other things such as serving customers, preparing foods or interacting in a more extent range with them,” said Mr. Kongnoo, or Den, about his inspiration.
Mr. Kongnoo further gave his account on such matter that, initially I had a look at the pork barbecue process as to how the process was and if we would make it in an automated grilling system, what should we have to do and what would involve in the pork barbecue process like picking up, moving, flipping, and checking for doneness, etc. In proceeding on, we divided our observations into parts to be developed, whichever should be done first. On Demo 1 robot, we started by developing the pork flipping mechanism, which was divided into two parts: the control system, the design of the gripper and grill structure, as well as our consideration on various limitations.
The mechanism behind the “Ping Ping” Robot is the adoption of a Co-operation Robot for developing to help flip pork skewers. The robot will slowly flip each skewer, while the human checks to see which skewer is cooked and removes it and then continue flipping the skewers. For skewers that aren’t cooked, the robot will continue its function on the flipping. Demo 1 robot can flip eight pork skewers at a time, but only one side because the grill is small while each skewer is of a different size and skewering method, so, they don’t all cook at the same time. Therefore, the Team designed the robot to flip the pork skewers rhythmically, skewer by skewer, by emphasizing human-robot collaboration to ease the burden and increase efficiency.
On the future development plan, Mr. Wachiraniramit, or Ai-Oun said that if Demo 2 should be further developed, he would like to develop the robot that would know which skewer should be flipped and could detect which one was done and not done. Meanwhile, a study has been conducted on how to use the robot to determine the doneness of the skewed pork. When grilling pork, the best doneness was on the bottom side because it exposed to heat which could not be seen from above. The study also included a system that would allow the robot to place cooked pork on a tray and pick up fresh pork skewers to grill on the grill as well as the increase in the speed of skewer flipping and the heat control system of the grill to increase for greater efficiency.
Asst. Prof. Dr. Supachai Wongbunyong, Director of the Field Robotics Institute, gave his explanations on this matter that, “The technology is not just about the technique, but it must also address the practical needs and be cost-effective. Although the prototype pork grilling robot has not yet been ready for general stores, however, it is considered to be the first step to applying robotics and AI to food business. It could be expanded to include premium restaurants or create new experiences in marketing activities in continuation from previous FIBO’s work achievement in food technology projects such as noodle-boiling robots, ice cream-scooping robots and beverage-making robots, which have transformed everyday life from manual labor to automation.”
Source: King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT)
