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After the Roboclette, the Sierroise start-up Workshop 4.0 has designed a robot capable of preparing a half and half fondue from A to Z. We tasted it!
Bouébot peels the cheese, grates it, pours the wine, cornstarch and pepper, stirs first in a circle, then in 8, and ends up serving 6 pieces of bread on skewers. Our report.
Christophe Pinol / Nicolas Comte
“What is a fondue?” wondered Obélix in the album “Asterix among the Helvetii”. “Probably a kind of local orgy”, replied his lifelong accomplice…
Bouébot, the robot from the Sierroise start-up Workshop 4.0, probably asked this question before learning to prepare our national specialty and thus compete with Friborg know-how. Designed in partnership with Gruyère AOP, Vacherin Fribourgeois AOP and Terroir Fribourg, the machine is indeed capable of cooking a perfect half and half. As creamy as it is tasty, let’s make that clear right away. But we’ll come back to that… The team of researchers from Valais is also preparing to present their baby with great fanfare at the Paris International Agricultural Show, from February 26 to March 6. And the company is not at its first attempt since it had already successfully presented Roboclette at CES in Las Vegas in 2020. A machine capable, we give you a thousand, of serving… the raclette.
French competition lagging behind
So no offense to the characters created by Albert Uderzo and René Goscinny, let’s start by giving back to Caesar what is Caesar’s: this Bouébot (in Friborg patois, the term designates the boy who at the time helped the armaillis in the manufacture of cheese), is not quite the first of its kind. A little over a year ago, French people – sacrilege! –, the robotics specialists from Mactech, had indeed already presented a machine that knows how to “prepare the fondue”. But one of two things: first, given their presentation video, the fondue – badly sliced – was anything but appetizing. Then their machine was really just mixing the cheese. While the Bouébot (also called Robotfondue), he, ensures the preparation of a half and half from A to Z: he peels the cheese, grates it, pours the wine, the cornstarch and the pepper, stirs first in a circle, then in 8, and ends up serving 6 pieces of bread on skewers following having dutifully dipped them in the mixture… Phew!
So let’s immediately get rid of the problem of the impact of robots in the world of work. No, Bouébot is not in danger of stealing the livelihood of our beloved restaurateurs. “The machine weighs a total of nearly 450 kilos, specifies Nicolas Fontaine, CEO of Workshop 4.0. It is expensive, imposing, must be meticulously prepared, calibrated and above all monitored during its operation. It’s nothing but a great communication tool, as much for the half-and-half fondue, as for the mechanical arm itself, our startup or robotics in general”. Ludovic Aymon, project manager, goes even further: “It’s a potentially dangerous industrial machine. If I got my fingers caught in the device as the arm rotates, the robot wouldn’t notice and would probably break them. It’s not a toy.”
A mastered second degree
We are therefore talking regarding a clever marketing operation, responsible for highlighting what Switzerland does best in terms of tradition and innovation. But in a good-natured tone, as the presentation videos of the project underline. We see the robot begin by assimilating Friborg traditions – by photographing the Saint-Nicolas cathedral, the Black Lake, the famous local cow – then following the advice of cheese experts before embarking on the preparation of the fondue. With a success and a know-how which does not leave insensitive the famous armailli Raoul Colliard in person.
But beware: behind this second degree and these smirks displayed, the technical prowess is indeed real. On a large table, all the elements needed to make the dish are placed in an arc, within easy reach of the robotic arm. There is the hot plate to place the fondue pot, an open bottle of white wine, two large portions of cheese wheel – one of Gruyère, the other of Friborg Vacherin –, a circular saw intended to cut the crust, a grater under which a scale will precisely measure 200 g of each cheese, cornstarch, pepper, and finally metal picks and croutons of bread for the final touch.
Afterwards, it must be understood that the robot is “blind”, is content to perform a series of movements in a pre-established order respecting very precise coordinates and therefore requires permanent monitoring. “When he starts to mix the grated cheese, specifies Ludovic Aymon, although we have given him the slowest possible movements so that he does not put it everywhere, it happens that shavings fall on the plate. A human would have picked them up and redoubled their precaution by continuing to mix. He’s not going to correct anything. We might have installed visual recognition, but it would have been much more expensive.
Under the supervision of terroir and tradition
The team also had to deal with particular difficulties, in particular linked to the difference in consistency of the cheeses: “The system capable of gripping and grating Gruyère and Vacherin, one with a hard paste, the other with a soft, was quite complex to set up”, confirms Nicolas Fontaine. It was also a question of respecting very precise specifications (established by the partners of Gruyère AOP and Vacherin Fribourgeois AOP) specifying not only the ingredients of the recipe to be respected but also the order in which they had to be prepared. We do not attack the terroir and tradition lightly!
So much the better, by the way, since on arrival, we had a great time… So let’s just point out that the CEO of the start-up, faced with a mix that pretended to separate in the home stretch, had to rectify all with a vigorous fork. The fault of a small hitch at the start of the course: the bottle of wine being almost empty when Bouébot had poured the beverage into the fondue pot, Ludovic Aymon had wanted to add a lick of it but had in the end had a little heavy hand… “ Usually, the mixture is perfect, assure us the two men in heart. There, it is really the overflow of white which prevented it from being really homogeneous”. We gladly give them the benefit of the doubt, especially given the end result: a fondue with lots of flavor and character and an impeccable consistency, both creamy and thick enough for the cheese to stick in sufficient quantity on the bread. We mightn’t have done better at home.
And then what can we say, to conclude, of a robot that pushes mimicry to the point of losing its piece of bread at the bottom of the fondue pot…? “Let him be given five blows with the stick!” immediately exclaimed Ludovic Aymon, a fine connoisseur of “Asterix among the Helvetii”. And if he loses another, the lashes…”. Afterwards, who knows, in his next iteration, Bouébot may be able to recover his piece of bread himself…