Project Open Hand, a nonprofit founded in 1985 by local grandmother and HIV-awareness advocate Ruth Brinker, prepares and packages meals to meet the diverse nutritional needs of those in need. The effort began in response to the AIDS crisis, but the nonprofit has since expanded the meals it makes to people with conditions like heart disease, diabetes or chronic kidney disease.
But making these meals takes many people, and Project Open Hand has struggled to entice volunteers to help fill the meal kits. The organization is housed in a four-story building in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. During peak hours, the place feels like a big operation, usually crowded with people. Some of them need the free food, some are staff and volunteers who prepare the food and keep the place running.
The process of putting together medically formulated meal boxes can be complex. Different patients have different needs, so food sent for donation may not be the same for everyone and allergies and nutritional requirements need to be taken into account based on people’s needs and medical conditions. This is where the robots come in.
“It’s not that they’re fast,” says Alma Caceres, a chef who works on the food preparation process at Project Open Hand. “It’s that we don’t have volunteers.”
Chef Robotics is a San Francisco company that creates “physical AI for the food industry.” It is one of many companies focusing on creating robots that can better handle physical objects. Chef’s automated robots focus exclusively on plating – no cooking or cutting – just the act of massaging the food onto a plate. It has customers for its robo-made meals, such as Amy’s Kitchen and Factor, a frozen-meal company. Chef Robotics is also training its robots to eventually handle more complex tasks, like assembling hamburger pieces.
The partnership with Open Hand came from a chance conversation between employees of the two organizations on Bay Area Rapid Transit. When presented with the idea, Paul Heffer, CEO of Project Open Hand, said the cost of renting the robot is worth it. (Yes, they pay membership fees.)
“Nonprofits often operate under a scarcity mentality, and I think that’s a disservice to the people we serve, because then you’re not looking for innovations or quality improvements,” Heffer tells WIRED. “I’ll bet there aren’t a lot of robots, AI, and innovation in the Tenderloin.”
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