Cooking robot

My name is Hans Polonio and I'm a 5th year biomedical engineer from Florida International University.
Despite my recent graduation, I have yet to obtain a stable job due to the lack of a Master's Degree. In the meantime I was interested in creating a robot that could cook by adjusting sensors to an arm that would hang from the ceiling. The sensors would be able to locate objects in 3D space and the arm would retrieve it. I was planning to make the robot with arduino technology but I was curious of how to begin as well as which sensor I should buy (or make) to put it all together. If you could provide any advice I would be eternally grateful. Thank you for your time in reading this request

Pretty ambitious for a first project. Some beginners here can't even complete an egg timer without a lot of help.