Good news for all those who find cooking a time-consuming chore after a hard day at the office! Four electronics and communications engineering (ECE) students of Saveetha Engineering College, Chennai — Jambulingam Muthu, Jesly Jose, Aravindh Ganesh and Chembian Parthiban, who graduated this year — have invented a fully automatic cooking appliance (chef bot). An assignment that began as a final year semester project of the quartet, has translated into a prototype and is receiving considerable attention from the media and researchers in India and abroad. Chef bot can make three South Indian rice accompaniments — sambar (in 24 minutes), rasam (18 minutes) and vatta kuzhumbu (10 minutes). The prototype was presented by Muthu and Parthiban at an international conference on embedded systems applications, one of WorldComp’s 25 high-level conferences held in Las Vegas from July 14-17, drawing 2,500 participants from across the world.

“It’s a privilege to be selected to attend WorldComp conferences which are the largest annual gathering of researchers in the IT and related industries convened by the University of Georgia. We were thrilled by the accolades and everyone was eager to know if chef bot can be customised to prepare western dishes. Our project has also been publicised in the international journal Springer. Back home too, we’ve been flooded with enquiries about when the machine will hit the market,” says Muthu speaking on behalf of the quartet.

Invention of this unique ICT (information communication techno-logy)-driven cooking device involved six months of extensive research, repeated trials and experimentation before its design and functions were finalised. The machine draws water for cooking from a bubble top water container sited in a top chamber. A programmed micro controller issues commands to the valves, motor and other components.

“All a user has to do is to ensure that ingredients are stored in their proper containers which should be in their allotted spaces. After a pan is placed on the induction slot for cooking and the machine is switched on, the menu has to be selected from the LCD display panel. Cooking then proceeds sequentially,” explains Jose.

This ingenious contraption will be a boon to working women, bachelors and Indian students abroad who yearn for their native cuisines, and is likely to be launched soon. A patent application has been made and the Union department of science and technology has offered full support for the project. “Within the next three years we hope to mass produce chef bot for the market,” says Parthiban.

Bon appetit!

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)