This robot uses Japanese tradition and AI for sashimi that lasts longer and is more human

A local startup uses artificial intelligence and robotics in an improbable way: making sashimi and other better taste fish, lasts longer and more human.

Shinkei Systems, based in El Segundo, wants to bring a traditional Japanese fishing of fish manipulation to gastronomy in America, using technology to replace the process with high intensity of labor historically managed by practitioners on board ships. Investors have just bet the millions he will succeed.

The company focused on the company’s AI – called Poseidon – was designed to make a traditional form of fish manipulation called ikejime in Japanese. It is a method of killing fish which, according to enthusiasts, improve flavor, texture and storage time.

Although fish transformed in this way are in some of the best restaurants in Japan, it has not been promoted in the United States because it is generally too expensive. Automation of the process will make it more easily available for Americans, said Saif Khawaja, CEO of the company.

“My final goal is that you enter your local grocery store and can buy fish that lasts three times longer, has a better taste and is humanly manipulated,” he said.

The company has raised $ 22 million in a financing round last month, co-directed by Founders Fund and Interlagos, bringing total funding to $ 30 million since its creation. He posed four working on Pacific and Atlantic ships and hopes to have 10 others working in the coming year.

THE ikejime The process is to take living fish that have just been captured and quickly put them out of their misery by killing them with a peak through the brain and cutting their branchies. This stops the stress hormone and the accumulation of lactic acid which can harm the flavor and texture when the fish are left to asphyxiation.

Although traditional practitioners sometimes add a step in which the spinal cord is destroyed, Poseidon simply makes the first stages of ikejime technical.

Reed Ginsberg nourishes a fish in a Poseidon.

(Mikey Santillan / For Times)

The method has remained largely artisanal even in Japan, where only some fishermen will make the effort to transform the batches of fish in this way to sell to specific sushi leaders who are obsessed with the highest quality ingredients.

Even in Japan, the method, “is still too much of high intensity of labor to reproduce at high speed without damaging the fish,” said Khawaja, adding that “it is impractical and unbearable for fishermen to adopt methods that require significant practical work” in the United States

Shinkei says he also has a higher vocation than simple fish to taste. Khawaja said one of the motivations for developing technology was trying to find a more kind and softer way to kill fish than let them die out of breath.

During childhood fishing trips with his father in the Red Sea, he remembers that he was “very difficult to look at” suffocating fish after being captured.

(In the direction of the needles of a watch from the left) The peak hole and the connected cuts that Poseidon makes to kill humanly. The black cod is sitting in ice after being put through Poseidon. Black COD which was enriched and gathered by Poseidon. (Mikey Santillan / For Times)

While he was in higher education at the University of Pennsylvania, Khawaja was moved by a test that argued that fish suffered from inhuman deaths because they cannot vocalize pain. He even considered a sensor development to make the pain of the fish audible.

Shinkei provides Poseidon machines to fishermen, who then sell transformed fish through shinkei machines to a bonus. Shinkei in turn sells fish to restaurants and other sub-index company seroni retailers.

Poseidon is about the size of a refrigerator and is on fishing boat bridges. He treats the fish a few seconds after being captured. The fish is powered by an opening in the machine and a small vinyl cavity. The machine then uses AI to identify the type of fish that is and where its brain and branchies are found exactly.

The fish emerge with a hole in the head and incisions near the gills before being placed in an ice suspension for blood drainage.

Quickly kill the fish, bleed and cool it without freeze causes fish that are significantly better, Khawaja said.

“There will be a difference in flavor profile and there will be a texture profile difference,” he said.

A fish fillet treated with Poseidon, on the left, is next to an ordinary fish net.

(Mikey Santillan / For Times)

The company has chosen Los Angeles for its head office and production because it has the right mixture of potential employees as well as customers. It has the talent of mechanical engineering as well as a large fishing fleet and many high -end restaurants.

“The best mechanical engineering talent in the world, in my opinion, is in southern California,” said the co-founder of Seroni, Reed Ginsberg.

The city is also a major health and consumption product center as well as a trend sector for advanced food modes.

Chef Michael Cimarusti, co -owner of the Michelin starred providence restaurant in Los Angeles, says he is trying to buy local ikejime Fish when it can because it preserves quality and color. The fish preserved using ikejime It looks like they “were simply drawn from the water a few minutes ago,” he said in an interview published on YouTube by the American Fishing Tackle Co.

Shinkei is currently dealing with thousands of books per week in operations in Washington, Central California and Massachusetts, with the expansion of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico this year. After comments from the fishermen that the bots adopted too much bridge space, the company has developed “block 2” robots which have about half of the imprint while treating the fish twice faster.

Semoni Black Cod is ready to be shipped after being put through a Poseidon.

(Mikey Santillan / For Times)

Currently, the black cod and the black bar treated by Poseidon are sold under the brand of Shinkei Serimoni in retailers such as Happer Grocery and served in high -end restaurants, including Atomix and Sushi Zo. This summer, the company plans to add salmon and red vivaneau to its offers.