"Good morning, Sarah," says the robot. "What would you like for breakfast today?" Sarah smiles. "Two pancakes please, Robbie," she says. "But not as thick as yesterday: thin, so I can put lemon and sugar on them and roll them up." The robot beeps. "Affirmative," it says. "Recipe adjusted to allow for lemon and sugar. Two thin pancakes to suit Sarah's tastebuds coming right up."

This could become a common scenarioAn imaginary situation. The word was originally Italian and referred to the plot of a stage drama., thanks to advances in robot technology at Cambridge University. "When a robot is learning how to cook, like any other cook, it needs indications of how well it did," says Dr Arsen Abdulali. "We want the robots to understand the concept of taste."

Up until now, robots have only been able to "taste" by taking a one-off sample from a dish and analysing its salt content. But this does not accurately reflect how humans decide whether we like eating something or not.

The texture and taste of food change as we chew it, with our saliva carrying the chemical compounds in it to the taste receptors on our tongues. These pass signals to the brain, which decides whether it tastes nice or nasty.

The new technology takes this into account by simulating the chewing process and taking readings of the saltiness at different stages. The "robochef" tasted nine variations of scrambled eggs with tomatoes at three separate points.

The robot looks similar to the mechanical arms that are seen in car factories, but it is designed for home or restaurant use. "There are many electronic 'tongues' you could technically use, but none of them is small enough and cheap enough to use in the kitchen," explains another member of the research team, Grzegorz Sochacki.

"We believe that the development of robotic chefs will play a major role in busy households and assisted living homes," says Dr Muhammad Chughtai, senior scientist at BekoA Turkish company which makes kitchen equipment and is collaborating with Cambridge University.. "By using machine and deep-learning algorithms... robot chefs will adjust taste for different dishes and users."

But, says Grzegorz Sochacki, "If you think about a fully autonomous robotic chef which is as good as us, we may need to wait around 20 years."

Still, the advances in robot cooking are extraordinary. In 2018, a Californian company produced a robot arm called Flippy, which turns over hamburgers when it judges that they are sufficiently cookedThe robot works out the right moment with the aid of thermal imaging.  on one side. The company has now created ChippyThe machine has been developed for the restaurant chain Chipotle., a robot which makes tortilla chipsThese are made from corn masa flour, water and sunflower oil..

 In 2019 a restaurant opened near Disneyland Paris serving robot-made pizzas. The Pazzi machine can produce up to 80 pizzas an hour, making 10 at a time if necessary, and vary the ingredients - for instance, if the dough is too sticky. The restaurant has had very good reviewsThe restaurant claims that 97% of its pizzas turn out as they are supposed to., and Pazzi's inventor is hoping to build up an international chain.

Last year a London company, Moley, unveiled a robotic kitchen with mechanical arms and hands on a rail. Costing £248,000, it can prepare 30 different dishes. 

Yes: The whole movement in our society is towards convenience. If there are machines to cook for us, people will stop learning to prepare food for themselves and will forget how to do it.

No: Many people cook not just to put food on the table, but because they really enjoy the process. And good cooks can improvise and invent new recipes in ways that the machine never could.

Or... Shopping rather than cooking will become the most important part of food preparation. Robots will all cook in the same way, but only humans will be able to pick out the best ingredients.