The research will largely take place at Carnegie Mellon's Computer Science school in Pittsburgh, with Sony executive Dr. Hiroaki Kitano leading professors and students. Sony is also reciprocating by funding the university's research projects and startups.

Why food? As Sony explained, the skills needed for cooking robots could be translated to a "broader set" of tasks. Food involves handling fragile and oddly shaped objects in a small space, not to mention loads of routine household and business chores. If a machine can excel at preparing your pad thai, it probably has talents that can be applied to medicine, factories and rescues. Just be patient -- any practical uses of the research are likely years away.