Chef Robotics, the leader in physical AI and robotics for the food industry, today announced its deposit assist capability, a new hardware attachment for Chef robots that improves deposit accuracy for scoopable ingredients into small compartments and inserts on meal trays. Deposit assist attaches to Chef’s existing end effector without requiring changes to production line infrastructure.

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Deposit assist attaches to Chef’s existing end effector without requiring changes to production line infrastructure.

Watch Chef robots in action.

Chef robots have been depositing scoopable ingredients into small compartments and inserts across meal assembly lines. For most ingredients, this works well. For finer, stickier ingredients like shredded cheese, however, the narrow target area reduces the margin for accurate ingredient placement, and sticky ingredients tend to cling to the outer portion of the utensil and between utensils after picking, increasing the risk of spillage into adjacent compartments. For food manufacturers producing fresh ready-to-eat salads, multi-compartment ready-to-heat meals, or any product with small compartments or clear inserts, this spillage leads to quality failures and sealing issues.

To address this problem, Chef developed the deposit assist capability. It is a funnel attached to the base of a utensil or multiple utensils for multi-deposit configurations. It acts as a physical guide when utensils open to deposit an ingredient. The funnel’s geometry directs the ingredient toward the center of the target compartment, even when the compartment is small or irregularly shaped. It can be customized to match the compartment size, utensil size, and number of utensils used, making it configurable across different tray formats and SKUs.

In addition, after picking an ingredient, the robot shakes the utensil multiple times over the pan before moving to the deposit location. This removes any leftover ingredient stuck between the utensils, ensuring that only the correctly portioned amount reaches the target compartment. Chef has built a food-safe, NSF-certified air cylinder actuator that mounts to the utensil and connects to Chef’s existing pneumatic system. This actuator is configured with manipulation parameters to adjust the shaking motion per ingredient.

For food manufacturers, deposit assist reduces spillage into adjacent compartments, and Chef’s vision system minimizes inconsistent portion weights throughout the production run.

The deposit assist capability is available in the US, Canada, and the UK and is included as part of Chef’s robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) pricing model.

About Chef Robotics

Chef is the first company to have commercialized a scalable physical AI solution for the food industry. With over 110 million servings made in production, Chef leverages ChefOS, an AI platform for food manipulation, to offer a Robotics-as-a-Service solution that helps industry-leading food companies increase production volume and meet demand. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Chef aims to empower humans to do what humans do best by accelerating the advent of intelligent machines. Visit https://chefrobotics.ai to learn more.

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