These Robots Are Making Meals For People Experiencing Food Insecurity in San Francisco

[Narrator] These robot arms are slinging potato salad.

They're also making meals to be delivered

to people experiencing health issues and food insecurity

in San Francisco.

The robots are made by Chef Robotics,

a company that focuses on AI for food prep.

Robots are still not great at cooking,

or even chopping food,

but they sure can scoop it up and plop it on a tray.

That kind of precise plating is very helpful

for assembling meals in factories,

or in this case, at Project Open Hand,

a nonprofit in San Francisco's Tenderloin district

that makes medically tailored meal kits

that it donates to people in need.

The organization relies on volunteers

to help assemble around 2,500 meals a day.

They cook, chop, and prepare the food,

then pack it into meal trays

with amounts precisely tailored

to include the right proteins, nutrients,

and allergy-free ingredients that people need

based on their specific medical conditions.

There are two robots on the assembly line.

Like a claw machine, they grab food from a bin,

and then drop it in the trays.

Operators can swap out attachments on the robots

to let them pick up various food items,

like potato salad and guacamole.

Other human volunteers handle the trays,

sealing them up, and packing them away for delivery.

There's also one person there,

focused on cleaning up the mess

the robots can sometimes make.

And these robots don't exactly replace humans either,

as their volunteers are often given other necessary,

less repetitive tasks.

Even with the robots there,

Open Hand says it will always need more human volunteers.