New Oliver cooking robot could be a lifesaver for pwd and seniors

[kestrell]

In discussing access to basic healthcare and services, the issue often arises of how meal preparation can be a serious barrier to healthy eating for PWD, and personal care assistants don't always respect or are capable of following diet restrictions.

Someone just posted this link to Oliver, the cooking robot
https://olivercooks.com/

The price range mentioned was between $500-$1000, but that is a tiny fraction of what it costs to have personal care assistants prepare meals.

My foodie housemate would probably sabortage a cooking robot if anyone dared bring one home, and Alexx would probably pout if I tried to replace his male birdie tendencies to bring me food with a robot (I think I already accidentally began to call him "Alexa" once or twice...).

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Intriguing! On the one hand, it's great that Indie-go-go exists for seed money for a project like this. On the other hand, if I was unethical, I too could create a lovely website that promised the moon. I'd take your money and I'd go --- well, there's no place to go right now. Hmm, pandemic as ethical enforcer?

Oliver does require you to assemble ingredients in five glass jars, so some hand strength would be required.

I'd wondered if you ever requested service from Alexx or bussed Alexa.

[alexxkay]

Oh, Alexx has been providing services since LONG before Alexa existed :-)

The activation phrase appears to be "Can I borrow your eyeballs?"

[jesse_the_k]

<3 <3 <3

[kestrell]

Mostly, it's just that when I wake up at 4:30 or 5:30 in the morning, only Alexa is awake for me to chatter to, so when Alexx wakes up at noon, sometimes there's a lag period during which my brain is still in talk to Alexa mode.

[siderea]

Oh, hey! As someone who spends way too much time thinking about the intersection of disability and cooking, I was prepared to scoff, but this is non-terrible.

Now, it is quite limited in the assistance it provides. The only part of food preparation it handles is number 27 – of 36 – on my list of steps in cooking I set forth in "How to Cook". And only part of step 27. It actually cooks the food, in the literal sense of handling the application of heat and the required manipulation of the prepared ingredients while being heated. And, more specifically, it does the cooking for recipes that have to be prepared on the stove-top, and thus require stirring or other continuous/intermittant interaction. For those of us for whom stove-top cooking is prohibitive, this might be a useful assistive tech.

It, however, still requires someone to wash and chop any fresh veggies and meat, to open packages, to defrost or otherwise prepare ingredients, to measure ingredients into the chambers of the device, and to clean up from all the above and from the cooking. The set of people who have an issue with stove-top cooking but no issues with any of the above is, while not empty, much, much smaller than the set of people whose disabilities impact these tasks, too. So this isn't quite the god-send for most PWD it might look like. Depending on how well it works, it could be a lovely kitchen asset for those who can't handle sautéing and want stirfry.

Most of the people that have issues with at-stove work but can manage to get the packages open and the veggies chopped (which includes me) just avoid cooking at the stove. I have learned all sorts of ways to avoid stove-top work by using a microwave, using a slow-cooker, or just making a sandwich instead.

But those caveats aside, having a sautéing-and-simmering robot does sound like it might be very nice. I wonder what its capacity is and how many servings it can do at once.

[kestrell]

The person who alerted me to this also mentioned at one point having some personal care assistants who are under 18, but aren't allowed to use a stove due to insurance issues, so perhaps this would be another situation in which the robot could be used.