2 . Tomorrow’s menus could feature items prepared with complex cooking techniques and presentation — all at the push of a button. Columbia University mechanical engineers have designed a 3 - D printer that can produce and cook dishes at the same time with details at the millimeter scale.

The design combines a multiwavelength laser (激光) cooker, roughly the size of five smart phones piled together, with a microwave - oven - sized food printer. The system uses various light wavelengths to cook in different ways: a short - waved blue laser goes deep inside meat, for example, while infrared beams (红外线光束) brown the surface. As the device’s robotic arm places fine layers of chicken puree (酱, 糊), a high - powered beam moves over them and cooks the meat — with literally laser - focused precision. Thus, users can achieve perfect results — say, a machine - made burger that varies between rare and well done in a checkerboard pattern.

“It gives you a lot more control and customization,” says Jonathan Blutinger, lead author of the paper and a digital - cooking researcher at Columbia. The researchers tested only chicken for this study, but the system can work with other foods as well.

Beyond applying diverse materials and presentation patterns, this type of software - controlled setup could someday scan a QR code to automatically prepare dishes tailored to individual eating habits and dietary restrictions, Blutinger says.

The new technology is “astonishing”, says Megan Ross, a food scientist who studies 3 - D printing at Ireland’s University College Cork. Ross notes that the design is still at a beginning stage and that many technical challenges remain, such as preventing cross pollution between layers of raw and cooked meat. Still, Ross is impressed by the device’s ability to produce foods outside the field of conventional cooking. “Is this going to be sold in shops everywhere in the next few years? No,” she says. “But everyone has to start somewhere.”