A conceptual design submitted to this year's James Dyson Awards -- a competition for young designers to come up with problem-solving inventions -- would have cooks placing food in a spherical pod to be cut into custom segments using lasers.
Andrey Kokorin, the concept's author, wanted to solve for unsanitary kitchen knives as vectors for disease.
Named "Innovative Laser Device For Cutting Of Foodstuff," the device uses a series of rotating rings lined with electromagnets coordinated by an internal microprocessor to cut food into millimeter-thin slices, segments based on mass or even simple images. Users would select the type of food and the kind of cut via a simple visual menu on the countertop next to the device.
With further development, this could be an essential part of a "smart" kitchen that knows exactly how to clean, cut and cook food safely and quickly.
See a video of the concept below.