I like burritos and I like cake, but I’m not sure that these two delicious foods were ever intended to meet. But leave it to some crafty pastry chef to defy logic and make one anyhow.
Yep, that’s not the world’s largest burrito – it’s a cake. It was made by Elizabeth Marek at Oregon’s Artisan Cake Company, and it looks good enough to eat – for lunch. The cake itself is chocolate with peanut butter mousse, but you’d never know it from the outside. The tortilla is made from fondant icing, and scorched with a blowtorch, and the guac and sour cream are made from buttercream. I have to assume the other fillings are all made of sugar, and not actual rice, beans, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, and olives.
If you decide to order one just like it, be sure to ask them to make some “salsa” for dipping it into. I’m thinking some mashed up strawberries and kiwis might do the trick.
Earlier this year we were treated to a funny hoax involving a quadcopter that was supposedly designed to deliver tacos. But don’t let that joke make you think that Mexican food and high tech aerial vehicles don’t mix. Because the Burrito Bomber is here. And yes, it actually works.
The delivery system was made by Darwin Aerospace using a mixture of off-the-shelf parts, open source software and 3D printing technology. The drone is a modified Skywalker X-8 running on Ardupilot. It delivers its tasty payload using a modified Quanum RTR, a remote-controlled toy bomb for hobby planes. The canister for the burrito is Darwin Aerospace’s custom design and was 3D printed.
So how does it work? Hungry infantry place their order on a smartphone via a custom web app. The order is sent to the drone along with the smartphone’s coordinates. The drone then flies to the location on its own and drops the canister, which safely parachutes down. It’s payload then explodes in your mouth, not on the battlefield.
The drone can also be controlled manually, so it can evade attacks from rival fast food chains. Seriously though Darwin Aerospace itself admitted that current FAA rules make an actual Burrito Bomber service illegal, but the fact that this thing even exists is good enough for me. Besides, can you imagine how chaotic our skies would be if all fast food was delivered this way?
[Darwin Aerospace via DVICE]
Love lounging around? Love burritos? Then you’ll most likely love the Blandito, or at least the thought that went behind it.
The Blandito is basically a giant pita-shaped sleeping mat that looks extremely cushy and comfortable. It’s convertible, too. Just twist it this way and that and tie it shut to wrap yourself (and your significant other) into a warm embrace.
The Blandito isn’t available for purchase yet, although you can bookmark its page on Behance and check back often for updates. This stop-motion video shows all the ways the Blandito can be folded, wrapped, and twisted into shape:
[via Behance via Bit Rebels]
If you ask me, 3D printing is the future – of everything. I think that within the next two decades, we’ll be using 3D printing technology (or variants thereof) to manufacture everything from parts for cars to replacement organs for humans. And robots are already used widely in food production, so why not a 3D printer that can create lunch? That’s exactly what the guy behind the BurritoB0t has in mind.
The Burritob0t is just what it sounds like – a robotic printer/extruder that can output burritos. Interactive designer/builder Marko Manriquez came up with the idea of a robot that can fabricate burritos after realizing the overlap between 3D printing (additive assembly and interchangeable ingredients) with burrito construction.
The BurritoB0t is designed to automatically create 3D printed burritos by layering and extruding components to produce a fully customizable, edible Tex-Mex treat. Marko already has a prototype of the machine (tech details here), but it isn’t ready for prime time (or meal time) just yet. From the looks of this video clip below, there’s a plan to launch a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to complete the BurritoB0t to feed hungry New Yorkers – but it doesn’t look like the fundraiser has started yet from what I can tell.
Whether or not the BurritoB0t ever sees the light of day at your local Taco Bell isn’t really important though. This is really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of robotic food construction. I can envision a day when 3D printing is fast enough that you’ll be able to dial up a recipe from your mobile device, and 3 minutes later, your fully-assembled meal will pop out of its tray. Now whether or not it tastes good… That’s a whole other question.
ITP, or the Interactive Telecommunications Program at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU churns out some of the most reliably interesting tech-centric artists in the world. Every so often, the school opens its doors to the public and the press and, of course, we jumped at the chance to see what the grad students were cooking up... literally. Marko Manriquez took the opportunity to showcase his thesis project, the Burritob0t, a 3D printer the spits out edible piles of beans and cheese, instead of non-toxic (but, highly inedible) plastic. The base is built largely around a standard RepRap machine, with the Frostruder attachment from MakerBot. From there it's pretty simple to plug in any 3D model and build your creation from highly-processed Mexican food -- on a heated platform from the Thingomatic, of course.
Marko says that his creation not only seemed like a logical way to combine "edible bits and digital bytes" but also a way to address the increasingly mechanized food industry and our growing reliance on manufactured "food." Sadly, we weren't able to get a complete demo on the show floor. The current incarnation of the device relies on air pressure to push the ingredients through syringes, and firing up the compressor was not an option. A Kickstarter is forthcoming, however, and Marko plans to upgrade the components to ditch the bulky and loud compressor. He also hopes to actually serve food from his printer, perhaps by taking up residence in a park. But, we suspect it'll be a while before you can get a Burritob0t burrito while you wait for your Concrete from Shake Shack. Check out the video after the break.
Continue reading Burritob0t hands-on (video)
Burritob0t hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 May 2012 19:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Listen to the Engadget Mobile Podcast, live at 2PM ET! originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Apr 2012 12:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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