hungry robots lab
The Hungry Robots Lab at Wageningen University & Research strives to innovate nutrition research. We want to measure what you eat, when you eat and how you eat fully automatically.
Our favorite techniques and skills include machine learning, machine vision, deep learning, engineering and magic.
About the robots
We work on the campus at WUR, within the division of human nutrition & health.
We are part of education, including the new master of data science for health, the minor quantified self, and a number of other courses on data science.
More about our research below
overview of our research
the smart tray
We are using a smart tray with pressure sensors to measure portion and bite-size.
The tray looks like a regular dining tray, find more information here at the published article.
machine vision
We are using facial landmark detection as well as deep learning to real-time analyze chewing behavior and eating rate.
This can be useful both for regular people and understanding how they eat, as well as for specific situations such as underweight elderly.
food recognition
We are using different techniques, including hyperspectral analysis (this definitely borders on magic) and machine learning to recognize the food that is on the plate.
meet the robots
Esther kok
hyperspectral robot
Esther is a lecturer in data science and Ph.D. student in hyperspectral imaging of foods and signal processing.
She lives in a small village nobody ever heard of, and we are unsure whether she has access to this website from there.
femke de gooijer
engineering robot
Femke de Gooijer is a Ph.D. candidate and our in-house engineering wonder. Building boxes that measure snacking, trays that measure eating, and putting stickers on kids’ food. Apart from this, her preferred restaurants for lab dinners are dubious, to say the least.
michele tufano
italian vision robot
Is it a Greek god? Is it an Italian stallion? No, it is our in-house machine vision wonder and Ph.D. candidate. Where most people would be squeamish to watch other people eat, Michele will be only too happy to film you do it and train his models on you. Lucky you…
marlou lasschuijt
eating behavior robot
dr. Marlou Lasschuijt is an Assistant Professor at the Sensory Science and Eating Behavior group and knows everything about chewing on hard and soft stuff. Not only from the frustration of performing difficult data analyses but also professionally.
julia roelofs
protein digestion robot
Julia Roelofs gives you protein, but you have no idea where it came from. It could be plant-based, it could be animal-based or it could be from outer space. The only thing you do know is, she will shove you in the MRI to look at your insides after eating.
elise van eijnatten
dairy protein robot
Eilse van Eijnatten is amazing! Not only doing Ph.D. research on dairy digestion and protein quality with MRI scanners, but she is also working as a clinical dietitian in Amsterdam. She has both patients and participants complaining listening to her!
Elske Brouwer
Diet assessment robot
Elske is an Assistant Professor Innovations in Dietary Assessment with special attention to dietary intake assessment in children. Also, Elske is more Frisian than Fryske dúmkes, which her dietician background definitely will not allow you to eat.
Iris van den Boomgaard
Education robot
Iris assists with education and writes a proposal so sexy it cannot be refused, and she’ll talk your ear off in order to sell the idea. She’s also a licensed dietician, so dedicated to getting people to eat healthily she even wears socks with vegetables on them.
guido camps
playful robot
Guido loves baking, bees and science. His main contribution to the Hungry Robots was this website and making sure there are social activities. Apparently, if the activities are good enough you get an authorship on some academic papers as well.
edith feskens
professor robot
Prof.dr.ir. Edith Feskens is professor of Global Nutrition and Health and leads the dietary assessment and eating behavior (DAEB) group within the division. She authored more papers than we wanted to count for this website profile.
chunzhao wang
modelling robot
Chunzhao Wang is doing his resarch as a PhD candidate at the university in Leuven (Louvain) in Belgium. If that is not difficult enough, he is working on modeling eating behavior from accelerometry data, from people eating with chopsticks and knife and fork.