Robot chefs and free software among masks, gloves and biohazard gear as China Inc donates to contain Covid-19 outbreak

Country Garden Holdings, one of China’s biggest real estate developers, has donated its Foodom robot to a quarantine centre in Wuhan to prepare meals for health officials. The product is among the billions of dollars of products that have poured into Wuhan since the outbreak started. — SCMP

At the Hubei Land Resources Vocational College, a quarantine facility in the epicentre of the global coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, a robot is cooking up a storm.

Called Foodom, the automaton can prepare 120 servings of clay pot rice with different ingredients every hour around the clock from its fuchsia pink metal casing the size of a standard shipping container. That’s enough to feed the army of doctors, nurses and health officials staffing the quarantine centre to contain an outbreak that has sickened 61,682 people and killed 1,921 in the province as of February 19.