Recent advances in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) are bringing the world inventions and applications that seemed impossible until recently. Proof of this is that a robot kitchen won the Robotics Award 2026, an international robotics award, presented in Hannover, Germany.
The creation of the company GoodBytz, based in Hamburg, also in Germany, needs just one human assistance: stocking it with fresh and semi-prepared ingredients and selecting which dish to make from an electronic menu. Once that’s done, the cooking robot harnesses the power of robotics and AI to prepare various types of meals.
The robot separates the food into pots, calculates cooking time and temperature, stirs the food in the various pots for better cooking, serves dishes and, no less importantly, washes the dishes at the end. The automatic kitchen system was created in 2021.
International Technology Fair
The award ceremony took place at the end of February, during an event that previewed innovations from Hannover Messe, the world’s largest industrial technology fair, set to occur from April 20 to 24 in Hannover, a city of about 550,000 inhabitants in northern Germany.
Brazil will be the guest country at this year’s edition, which, besides robots and AI, will showcase digitalization, automation, decarbonization, and clean energy technologies. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the German chancellor (head of government), Friedrich Merz, confirmed their attendance at Hannover Messe.
Beyond Restaurants
At the award ceremony, GoodBytz co-founder and CEO (executive director) Hendrik Susemihl explained that the cooking robot was designed not only for restaurants.
“When we think about robotics and food, we think a lot about infrastructure. So, I don’t just think about restaurants. I think about hospitals, universities, and military infrastructure…”, he said.
For Hendrik Susemihl, the invention helps overcome bottlenecks in the food industry. “It’s an industry extremely dependent on human labor. We’ve all experienced restaurants closing, labor shortages, and also quality problems,” he justifies.
“In 2026 we have robots cooking for humans, which is really great,” he assesses.
Origin of the Idea
In a conversation with Agência Brasil right after winning the award, the GoodBytz CEO shared that the idea for a cooking robot stemmed from a “very personal story.”
“My father suffered a very severe heart attack, and my wife and I became very interested in healthy eating and also in teaching him how it changes his life and health,” recalled the director, who is also co-founder of Neura Robotics, a humanoid robot company.
Hendrik Susemihl said he found it complicated at times “to go out and find something decent and healthy to eat.”
He says that led him to question why the meal industry operates the same way as decades ago and hasn’t evolved like other manufacturing sectors.
“Why not build a product that can really make freshly cooked items massively adaptable and scalable, using robotics and AI exactly for that?” he asked.
Coming Years
Asked about expectations for the cooking robot over the next five and ten years, Hendrik Susemihl said he believes it will become “quite normal” for automation to be part of people’s daily lives, not just in food services.
“People now, of course, are a bit scared of the shift, because for decades people cooked manually, and the craft of a chef is very established in our culture too,” he admitted.
But he highlights niches that smart kitchens can fill.
“Where it’s very hard to find people or where it’s simply too expensive to serve, for example, 50 people at a company not near a city center,” he says.
The robotics expert believes there is currently a divide between premium gastronomy and basic food consumption.
“Basic consumption is unfortunately often of very low quality,” he says.
“That’s what we’re targeting with robotics: simply elevating it greatly, making very good meals accessible to everyone at fair prices,” he maintains.
Today, the company’s clients include the United States Army; the French multinational collective catering firm Sodexo; the German supermarket chain Edeka; and the European group Transgourmet, which handles food delivery.
Source: Agência Brasil