It all started with a passion for new technologies and cooking. Designing a mobile app was one of the assignments to get credit for a course at the Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology.

‘I wanted to create something I’d use myself and something that could make my life a bit easier,’ says Bartłomiej Gajda. ‘I like cooking, so I came up with an idea of Chefs’ – an app for storing recipes. Later, me and Michał Grzeszczyk took part in a competition for an innovative application utilising artificial intelligence. We saw it as an excellent opportunity to develop the project.’

The competition was Huawei AI Challenge 2020. Bartek and Michał won it.

How does Chefs’ work?

‘To facilitate recipe management, we created an AI module,’ explains Bartek. ‘All you do is take a photo of a cookbook or a screenshot from the Internet, and our application will automatically detect the text and use the neuron network to divide it into proper categories such as title, ingredients and the procedure. It allows users to quickly get a digital version of the recipe which they can share with friends or find a few months later, using our internal search engine.

A simple and convenient solution, practically unavailable in other apps, free and available at Google Play and Huawei App Gallery stores.’

Chefs' is available in four languages: Polish, English, German, and Spanish.

Bartłomiej Gajda and Michał Grzeszczyk - Chefs' app creators

Keep good eating habits

Bartek and Michał have not rested on their laurels and are developing their idea further.  They have added new functionalities: adding recipes based on a link to a website or searching the Internet directly from the app level.

They have decided to use Chefs’ as a backup in promoting good eating habits.

‘According to World Health Organisation, the number of obese people has tripled since 1975 and the National Health Fund states that one in four Polish people struggles with obesity,’ points out Bartek.

Students have decided to add a new module to their app – one for calculating the energetic value of the meals based on the recipe content and indicating ingredients that may negatively impact our health.  You will be able to check the calories in any recipe from a book, magazine, or the Internet with one click. For this purpose, a special neuron network is being created which can recognise the ingredients and their quantity in a prepared meal.  The ingredients are analysed based on a calorie database to eventually estimate the energetic value of a meal.

‘We’d like to encourage the users to analyse their meals more and to increase their nutritional awareness at the same time,’ says Bartek.

Students are planning to share the new module this autumn.

New module of Chefs’ app is being developed by Bartłomiej Gajda and Michał Grzeszczyk within the project ‘Utilising AI in improving eating habits’ funded by the Ministry of Education and Science ‘Best of Best! 4.0’.