Why does everything have to be as cost effective as possile?
I'd much rather have robots in my kitchen and my garden that grow fresh vegetables on my soil, adapted to my preferences, and turn them into dishes that match my taste,
than the end-product of a ginormous industrial farming machine.
60-70% of the worlds food supply comes from family farmers,
yet most pesticide and fertiliser usage is in industrial farming.
Factory farming is only cheaper because artificial fertiliser is so cheap, but if you look at the "costs" on the entire system/ecosystem it's a lot more expensive.
If you only view food as a source of nutrition and energy, then this might seem reasonable, but it completely ignores the socio-cultural aspects of cooking.
Having a robot in your kitchen allows you to share in the work, to learn from it, and teach it.
Maybe you cut the tomatoes while it peels the onions.
Or you start cooking, and it finishes for you.
Maybe you cook your lunch, but because you want to wake to the smell of freshly baked croissant, the robot does it.
There is an infinite spectrum of interaction, learning, and joy that could come from this, that goes beyond merely eating the prepared dish.
Maybe small restaurants in the style of old Japanese eating houses combined with community gardens would be a good middle ground though, but having industrial take-out everyday sounds like a dystopia to me.
We are halfway there, Samsung afaik presented a cooking robot this CES
While the open source community is working on home farming robots [1]
[1] https://farm.bot/
Happy to see this mentioned. It has been considered as a project for a spare large outdoor area in my SF home! (good project to get the nephews excited about growing their own food as well)
I think if you could get it down to the price of a car it would make sense for a lot of households.
Families are really busy, and meal prep/cleanup takes a lot of time.
1- Decide what you want made and how you want it made (by choosing ingredients and cooking methods from a UI)
2- Place your order
3- Automated Restaurant queues your custom order, picks ingredients, cooks according to your preferences, and packs it
4. Drone (or human) delivers it rapidly, while still warm
Better to fill a big warehouse-size restaurant with robots than to fill a million kitchens with robots.