Awesome. I was thinking the other day that an automated kitchen should be entirely possible.

You buy groceries, place them in their designated slots in the fridge. Robot arms know which slots hold each ingredient, and can measure and cut appropriately (using scale, food processor, and maybe some other specialized cutting appliance for trickier items). Stove top is easy to control and pans are all lined up for the robot arms to repeatedly grab. Most recipes could fit within this somewhat limited set of "building blocks" that the kitchen robot could easily perform: measure 8 oz of tomatoe, dice onion, boil pasta, slice chicken breast into strips, pour 2 oz of oil on pan, etc. The hardest part might be washing the dishes.. Heh

>measure 8 oz of tomatoe, dice onion, boil pasta, slice chicken breast into strips, pour 2 oz of oil on pan, etc. //

Surely you have the industrial machines do the pasta sauce in a factory, so no need to measure tomatoes and dice onions. Similarly the chicken breast can be cooked and pre-sliced (or cubed).

The greatest problem I foresee with this is maintaining hygiene. The machine will slop and mess, eg pouring ragu, cooking with oil that splatters. Those surfaces will need cleaning and ingredients that spoil readily (fresh diced chicken) will need disposing of and replenishing regularly. It certainly doesn't seem impossible but each section would need specialised washing equipment it seems, or maybe be entirely submersible and so allow the machine to be flushed from the top and then have a steam wand clean the individual stations.

I see it working for making dishes in an automat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat) but not really being efficient enough for a domestic situation.

Perhaps a digester for the expired foodstuffs and left overs could be built in to generate energy for heating and cooling required in the machine?