Tired of cooking? No worries. A robot chef may soon take your place in the kitchen. Designed by the students of Saveetha University, Chennai, this automatic robot gadget can cook south Indian dishes like sambar, rasam and kuzhambu in a fixed time mode. The autonomous chef has been designed using an embedded system for integrating the entire robot. There is an electric induction pan used for heating. The ingredients required for rustling up a dish are stored in docks that can be manually removed and refilled. The amount and timings of the outlets in each dock are controlled by micro controller operated valves. Seasoning is the most important factor to be kept in mind while cooking. The robot chef does this vital task with elan. With negligent power consumption, the robot is designed with all safety precautions. Being served mouth-watering dishes by a robot chef, without sweating it out in the kitchen, may not be science fiction anymore.

CALCUTTA

Shooting stars

Good news for shutterbugs. The National Academy of Photography (NAP), Calcutta, is offering students two workshop-based courses in digital and fashion photography.

The digital photography course will train students in the basic principles of digital technology, basic digital camera shooting techniques, still photography, portrait photography, outdoor shooting and empowering images with Photoshop. The duration of the course is six months and the course fee is Rs 7,000.

If fashion is your area of interest, you can opt for the three-month course in fashion photography. This course will cover areas like lighting techniques, figure shape study, glamour photography, shooting techniques of fashion photography and the light schemes for different costumes and figures. The course fee is Rs 8,000.

Students will also undergo a 16-week course on darkroom processing techniques and photo editing. An inhouse photo exhibition will be held on Tuesdays, where eminent camerapersons will judge the photographs taken by the students.

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