(Left) Burritob0t platform (Right) The bot does not print the tortilla, unfortunately (via Marko Manriquez)
Robots have been showing their love for making food over the past few years like Suzomo’s SushiBot which can pump out thousands of the tasty rolls and the MIT BakeBot that mixes up cookie batter ingredients from scratch. It seems all the major cuisines are being slowly represented from our mechanical friends, but none have the unique technique of printing up delicious burritos like that of Marko Manriquez’s Burritob0t.
The robot uses a Mechatronics/Gantry 3D printing system with RAMPS (RepRap Arduino MEGA Pololu Shield) electronics, based in-part from RepRap’s self-replicating manufacturing machine, as the robots base platform. To actually build a burrito, the robot needs a 3D model representation of the ingredients (cheese and beans) which is done through the use of ReplicatorG software that converts the STL/3D model to GCODE. Once the robot has the converted code, the ingredients are fed into two MakerBot Frostruder MK2 compressed air delivery syringes which pump out ingredients based on the 3D model onto a tortilla.
Marko designed Burritob0t for his thesis project at ITP (Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU) as a way to examine the relationship between fast-food practices (conveyor-belt edibles) and human nutritional habits. While the robot does not actually build a burrito from scratch, it does print up 3D piles of tasty ingredients with digital perfection.
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