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Thursday, July 06, 2017

Robots are coming to a Burger Joint Near You

Grilling burgers may be fun on the Fourth of July, but less so if hot grease is your daily grind.

Enter Miso Robotics. The southern California start-up has built a robotic "kitchen assistant" called Flippy to do the hot, greasy and repetitive work of a fry cook. Flippy employs machine learning and computer vision to identify patties on a grill, track them as they cook, flip and then place them on a bun when they're done.

Miso is part of a budding kitchen automation industry. Its peers include Zume Pizza, Cafe X, Makr Shakr, Frobot and Sally, which are developing robots to help commercial kitchens churn out pizzas, lattes, cocktails, frozen yogurt, and salads.

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8 comments:

Anonymous said...

And they said it wouldn't happen, no if Mc D's and every other fast food joint uses this, they only need now is a robot to packages the food and no need for a human to be involved but to check on the robot form time to time... Where is your job now??? Since you all love technology so much???

Anonymous said...

Machines can fail, so they will still need a technician to repair these units when they fail. I can see cashiers being replaced, but wonder about the quality of the food from these automated units. I worked on and off as a cook for McDonald's during the Seventies and eighties to help me pay bills and supplement my full time job. Grills need to be scraped and cleaned after each batch is run. Also have to be cleaned and and prepped after each shift. Can a machine do this? Or judgement of quality of the product? What if there is a malfunction or the grill is not hot enough? Who is responsible for food poisoning if the product is under cooked? What about food prep for the ingredients that go into the making of each sandwich?

Anonymous said...

I think the quality of the food will suffer.

Anonymous said...

Better sanitation.

Anonymous said...

$15.00 an hour looking better and better - eh?

Anonymous said...

Stop people! Does anyone care about the quality of the food where these things will be used?

Anonymous said...

at least a machine won't be getting paid 15.00 an hour to spit in your food or smear it on the floor because the person making it is disgruntled that day.

Anonymous said...

Maybe this is the dawning of a new era; meals at home. My gosh, what a concept. Now I must admit I grew up with the family seated around the dinner table that mom prepared. It was nutritious, filling, and the banter enjoyable. With the robotics, are we too become robotic?