MAMPF: An Intelligent Cooking Agent for Zoneless Stoves

The Multifunctional and Adaptive Meal Preparation Facility (MAMPF) is a versatile and adaptive kitchen system allowing even an inexperienced user to create ambitious dishes. On the hardware side, the system controls hotplates by regulating the temperature of heated regions to turn the attention to the food actually being heated instead of the hotplate. Furthermore, the user interaction with the computer system is adapted to the requirements in a kitchen. On the work flow side, MAMPF converts a recipe into a task tree which is used to guide the user through the cooking process. By knowing the recipe, based on a formal description specially developed for this system, the optimal sequence of actions can be calculated. The system is designed to support the user without limiting spontaneity or creativity and can - if necessary - be used just like any usual stove. Consequentially, the user always retains control over the system, all settings can be overwritten at any point, and the order of the tasks can be dynamically rearranged. In order to prove the correctness of this concept, a prototype has been implemented.