Avocados: The Unexpected Nemesis of Food Automation

The Avocado Adversary

Now, here's where our green friend enters the picture. When asked about the most challenging ingredients to automate, Fukuba didn’t hesitate: “The things that keep us up at night are avocados, like sliced avocado, a blaze of fish, and long and stringy pastas or noodles.”

But why is the avocado such a troublemaker? It all comes down to the delicate nature of this beloved fruit (yes, it’s a fruit!). Avocados are soft, easily bruised, and their shape can vary significantly. For a robotic system designed to handle uniform, predictable ingredients, the avocado is like that one puzzle piece that just won’t fit no matter how you turn it.

The Broader Challenge of Food Automation

The avocado dilemma is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the challenges of food automation. Hyphen has tested over 500 different ingredients in their systems, each with its own quirks and complications.

Shredded meats, for example, tend to clump together, requiring the machine to “de-agglomerate” (that’s a fancy way of saying “un-clump”) the ingredients without damaging them. Sticky foods pose another challenge, as they can gum up the works, quite literally.

On the flip side, some ingredients are a breeze for these robotic chefs. Rice, beans, and chopped vegetables are the low-hanging fruit of food automation. Their uniform size and non-sticky nature make them ideal candidates for mechanical portioning.

Engineering Ingenuity and Collaborative Design

So, how does a company like Hyphen tackle these culinary conundrums? With a healthy dose of engineering ingenuity, a dash of persistence, and a hearty serving of collaborative design tools. Fukuba and his team have embraced a rapid prototyping approach, leveraging 3D printing technology to iterate on their designs quickly.

In fact, Hyphen’s office houses nine Formlabs 3D printers that run almost nonstop during development cycles. This allows the team to design, print, and test new dispensing mechanisms at a breakneck pace – a far cry from the traditional product development cycle, where each iteration might take weeks or months.

But the secret sauce in Hyphen’s recipe for success is its use of Onshape. Onshape allows Hyphen’s engineers to collaborate in real-time, making design changes and improvements on the fly. 

As Fukuba explains, “What you would typically do in a traditional CAD system is have all these experiments as a save-as copy file with a different file name. You're spending so much time, and you got a CAD admin who can keep things organized in PDM.”

With Onshape, Hyphen can create branches for different design experiments, easily track versions, and quickly iterate on their designs. This agile approach to CAD has been crucial in helping Hyphen navigate the complex world of food automation design.

“In Onshape, we can literally create branches and then use those to reconcile and tag an experiment and quickly iterate or toss it to another engineer,” he says. “It's very collaborative with our teams.”

From Food Truck to Chipotle Partner

Hyphen's journey is as fascinating as their technology. The company started as a food truck serving automated smoothies, then pivoted to salads when the pandemic hit. Now, they're partnering with giants like Chipotle to bring their technology to mainstream fast-casual dining.

Their latest system, developed in just seven months thanks in part to their agile design process with Onshape, is a testament to their approach. It’s the same size as a standard Chipotle make line, making it a drop-in replacement for existing setups. This compatibility is crucial for widespread adoption in an industry where space is always at a premium.

Environmental Impact

While robots assembling our meals might seem like a purely technological advancement, there’s a green lining to this innovation. Hyphen’s automated system isn’t just about speed and consistency – it’s also making strides in reducing food waste, a major environmental concern in the restaurant industry.

How does it work? It's all about precision. The robotic system, designed collaboratively using Onshape, portions ingredients with exacting accuracy. This means less overportioning, which is a common issue in manual food preparation. When you multiply this precision across hundreds or thousands of meals per day, the reduction in food waste becomes significant.

But it doesn’t stop there. The data collected by these automated systems provides invaluable insights into ingredient usage patterns. This information allows restaurants to optimize their ordering and inventory management, further reducing the likelihood of ingredients spoiling before they can be used.

Fukuba explains, “It's very difficult to know in the restaurant or in any food service facility what the actual consumption was in the bowls going out. Typically, restaurants are not weighing the bowls or the portion sizes.” With Hyphen’s system, this guesswork can be eliminated. Restaurants get accurate data on ingredient usage, allowing them to fine-tune their supply chain and reduce overordering.

The Future of Food Service

As Hyphen continues to refine its technology and expand its partnerships, we’re likely to see more automated make lines popping up in restaurants across the country. Although Hyphen is currently focused on the North American market, there’s global interest in its technology.

The challenges are far from over, though. As Fukuba points out, the food service industry lacks the standardization found in other automated fields. There’s no equivalent to the tool holders and offsets found in CNC machining, for example. Establishing these standards will be crucial for the widespread adoption of food automation technology.

The Avocado Endgame

So, what does the future hold for our nemesis, the avocado? Well, in the spirit of collaborative problem-solving, Vebu, a robotics company that also utilizes Onshape, has a solution: The Autocado.

The Autocado is another cobot designed specifically to solve the avocado problem. Now, along with Hypen’s and Vebu’s technology, Chipotle is getting closer to streamlined food automation, serving up tasty meals in minutes. 

“These cobotic devices could help us build a stronger operational engine that delivers a great experience for our team members and our guests while maintaining Chipotle’s high culinary standards,” Chipotle’s Curt Garner said in a press release.

So, the next time you're enjoying a perfectly portioned burrito bowl, spare a thought for the engineers working tirelessly behind the scenes. They're not just building robots; they're reshaping the future of food service, one ingredient at a time.