Robots that cook or serve include a robot that makes okonomiyaki (savory pancakes).

In an empty fluorescent-lighted hallway on the second floor of Smith Hall here at Carnegie Mellon University, Prof. Paul Rybski and a pair of graduate students showed off their most advanced creation.

The culmination of two years of research and the collective expertise of 17 faculty members, undergraduates and doctoral students in the Human Robot Interaction Group, it is a robot outfitted with a $20,000 laser navigation system, sonar sensors and a Point Grey Bumblebee 2 stereo camera that functions as its eyes, which stare out from its clay-colored plastic, gender-neutral face.

With Dr. Rybski looking on like a proud parent, a bearded graduate student clacked away at a laptop on a roving service cart, and the robot rolled forward to fulfill its primary function: the delivery of one foil-wrapped Nature Valley trail-mix flavor granola bar.

“Hello, I’m the Snackbot,” it said in a voice not unlike that of HAL 9000, from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” as its rectangular LED “mouth” pulsated to form the words. “I’ve come to deliver snacks to Ian. Is Ian here?” I responded affirmatively. “Oh, hello, Ian,” it said. “Here is your order. I believe it was a granola bar, right?” Yes, it was. “All right, go ahead and take your snack. I’m sure it would be good, but I wouldn’t know. I prefer a snack of electricity.”

Designed to gather information on how robots interact with people (and how to improve homo-robo relations), the Snackbot has been carefully considered for maximum approachability in every detail, from its height to its color. The snack, not surprisingly, is the central component of that approachability.“We figured, what better way to get people to interact with a robot than have something that offers them food?” Dr. Rybski said.

The Snackbot is but one soldier in a veritable army of new robots designed to serve and cook food and, in the process, act as good-will ambassadors, and salesmen, for a more automated future.

In 2006, after four years of research and more than a quarter-million-dollar investment, Fanxing Science and Technology, a company in Shenzhen, China, unveiled what was called the “world’s first cooking robot” — AIC-AI Cooking Robot — able, at the touch of a button, to fry, bake, boil and steam its way through thousands of Chinese delicacies from at least three culinary regions.

AIC-AI needs a special stove for cooking, but many of the mechanized culinary wizards developed since then can work on almost any kind of stove, as long as the robot is either shown ahead of time how a particular stove works or the stove’s characteristics are programmed into the robot’s software.

In 2008, scientists at the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory in Lausanne came out with one such teachable chef, the Chief Cook Robot, which can make omelets (ham and Gruyère were in its first) and bears a resemblance to the Pillsbury Doughboy. That same year, at the Osaka Museum of Creative Industries in Japan, a programmable robot began preparing takoyaki (octopus balls) from scratch, a chef’s bandana wrapped jauntily around its upper module. Last June, at the International Food Machinery and Technology Expo in Tokyo, a broad-shouldered Motoman SDA-10 robot with spatulas for arms made okonomiyaki for attendees; another robot grabbed sushi with an eerily realistic hand; and still another, the Dynamizer, sliced cucumbers at inhumanly fast speeds. (NYT)