A Russian graduate has entered a laser food cutting design that relies on electromagnets into the annual James Dyson Award.
The award, which has seen more than 500 candidates from 18 countries enter in 2012, provides young designers and engineers with a £10,000 incentive to come up with a problem-solving invention. The Russian entry — from Ural State Academy of Architecture and Arts graduate Andrey Kokorin — has focused on replacing unsanitary and unsafe kitchen knives with a fast, clean, time-saving and, let’s face it, much more fun kitchen utensil — a laser.
The “Innovative Laser Device For Cutting Of Foodstuff” (luckily, candidates are not judged on the inventiveness of brand names) looks a little like the sleek white helmet of a robot, with a glass food bowl hidden under a visor that swings open and closed. When preparing food, all a user needs to do is open up the lid, pop the food into the two-litre bowl, swing it shut and select a few key options from the menu. The menu is projected onto an adjacent work surface, with three circles indicating food type (meat, fruit, vegetables etc), cutting method (normal, spiral, cubes or even simple images) and slicing thickness — it can divide the food up into millimetres or equal portions according to mass.
A breakdown of the device shows an internal system of horizontal and vertical rings along an x, y and z axis, which are lined with strips of electromagnets. In between these strips are motion sensors that track the position of the rings. This data is sent to an internal microprocessor, which in turn sends instructions to the electromagnetic strips telling them when to switch on. Once on, the rings begin to rotate and the laser transmits its beam according to an algorithm that uses the food shape, mass and cutting method selected to achieve the perfect slice. Kokorin admits that “additional research in cooperation with competent people” is necessary to figure out what type of laser would most succinctly deal with the food cutting, though he suggests using an anti-laser to modify the beam.
via Wired – Liat Clark
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