Eating food made by robots(10.120, -0.23, -2.22%) is a very futuristic experience. At the 2022 Winter Olympics, participants are experiencing such a "future world".
1. The smartest restaurant
Winter Olympics workers have equipped the venue with various robots: atomization disinfection, temperature monitoring, logistics and transportation, cashier robots, and the restaurant robots discussed in this article. Minimize the risk of the spread of the new coronavirus.
In the restaurant of the main media center of the Winter Olympics, diners select their favorite food by scanning the QR code on the table. When the data is transmitted to the background, the robot starts to make it. The food includes both Chinese classics and Western-style burgers and fries. Diners can see the busy robot in the kitchen through the transparent glass.
Taking Chinese food cooking as an example, Chinese food served in restaurants can be divided into four categories: steamed vegetables, stir-fried vegetables, boiled vegetables, and casserole. Through the built-in data of cooking technology, heat control, and action on the stove, the robot can fry classic Chinese dishes such as Kung Pao Chicken and Dongpo Pork. Traditional cooking may also be quite different due to chef skills and delicious aesthetics, but the use of robots can achieve a "stable chef level" with its accurate data transmission.
Once made, meals will be delivered via rails in the ceiling above the table for each order. Then, huge arm-like hooks drop the food to the table for easy access by customers.
It is reported that the restaurant is equipped with a total of 120 meal-making robots, and has prepared 678 special dishes from all over the world, which can serve thousands of people at the same time. In addition, robotic trash cans and robotic mops are deployed around the venue to keep the ground clean and tidy. After the meal, if participants want to have a drink, they can also go to the bar to taste the cocktail prepared by the robot.
2. Robots that can cook in a three-dimensional space are more efficient
One of the main designers of the restaurant for the Winter Olympics is Yan Weixin, a doctoral supervisor at the Institute of Robotics, School of Mechanical and Power Engineering, Shanghai Jiaotong University. He has been researching Chinese cooking robots for 15 years and has developed more than 60 catering service robots. Since 2019, Yan Weixin has cooperated with enterprises to open a number of "Tianjiang Food" robot restaurants to provide customers with delicious food, such as preserved meat claypot rice and steamed bamboo shoot shell fish.
In an interview with Yicai, Yan Weixin mentioned that for Chinese food, robots and manual cooking methods and cycle times are the same. The difference is the space utilization rate. At this level, the "smart restaurant" system cooks more efficient than humans.
"People cook in a plane, and now machines can cook in a three-dimensional space, and the space utilization rate is high. There are more stoves and stoves, so the output will be higher." Yan Weixin said.
Yan Weixin believes that the core of the design of Chinese cooking robots is the movement of pots and pans, including "shaking, bumping, scratching, turning, pushing, pulling, raising, and pouring" and other actions. Through in-depth research on the movements on the cook's stove, he refined "standardized movements", such as dismantling "shaking the pot" into a combination of circular and linear movements.
Figure 5: Illustration in Yan Weixin's doctoral dissertation Source: Shanghai Jiaotong University News Academic Network Figure 5: Illustration in Yan Weixin's doctoral dissertation Source: Shanghai Jiao Tong University News Academic Network
In the movement of the pot, the "big flip" is the most difficult for robots to imitate. The fried food needs to perform a parabolic flip motion in the air and cannot fall out of the pot. Through the analysis and experimental verification of a large number of simulation functions, Yan Weixin's robot can realize the "cooking" A replica of the "Big Flip" action.
In addition to improving efficiency and ensuring the standard taste of food, robotic cooking also has the effect of replicating master cooking. "Robots help to inherit Chinese cooking culture. We have cooperated with many cooking masters to record their cooking ingredients, stove movements and heat control. We are converting standardized records into robot control programs to replicate and inherit the cooking skills of the masters. "Yan Weixin said.
3. Robot restaurants are becoming more and more popular
Robot restaurants have been around for nearly 40 years, starting with Two Panda Deli, the first restaurant to employ robots as waiters in 1983. Two Panda Deli uses robots Tanbo R-1 and Tanbo R-2 to deliver food to customers. In addition to food delivery, Tanbo R-1 and Tanbo R-2 also tell jokes and play music, which are very popular with customers.
Even though today's catering industry is very different from the past, the pursuit of higher efficiency and smarter services is a constant trend. In recent years, more and more entrepreneurs have seen opportunities in the field of restaurant automation, such as machine delivery and machine meal preparation.
Table 1: Companies in the field of machine distribution (part) Data source: crunchbase, the company's official website Table 1: Companies in the field of machine distribution (part) Data source: crunchbase, the company's official website
Table 2: Companies in the field of machine meal making (part) Data source: crunchbase, the company's official website Table 2: Companies in the machine meal making field (part) Data source: crunchbase, the company's official website
4. Are robots the future of restaurants?
The advantages of hiring robots are obvious, but there are still some concerns that deserve to be discussed.
Advantage:
1. Production (for employers): The robot can run continuously for 24 hours without any sick leave, no holidays, and can fully adapt to standardized production labor, which is conducive to the improvement of production efficiency. In addition, hiring robots can effectively deal with labor shortages.
2. Safety (for employees): For fast food restaurant employees, tight kitchens, hot oil and grills, and heavy physical labor pose health risks. With robot substitution, employees can focus on non-labor-intensive operations.
3. Experience (to customers): When eating in a robot restaurant, in addition to buying food, you are also paying for the experience. Customers, especially children, will like novelty very much.
4. Health (for customers): During the COVID-19 epidemic, robot restaurants are more able to show their advantages and are the best choice for customers who want to go to restaurants and worry about the spread of the virus.
concern:
1. Technology (to the employer); take the example of the robot Tanbo, which stops working when someone walks in front of it, and stops working if someone moves the desk and chair back and forth. For meal-making robots, they can only cook food from a specific recipe, they won't change them according to demand, and they can't recognize if the food has gone bad.
2. Costs (to employers): Robots are generally more expensive, especially meal-making robots. The Hamburg robot Flippy costs about $30,000. In addition, employers need to consider the maintenance and repair costs of the robot, how much it costs, and who can repair it.
3. Ethics (to employees): The replacement of human labor by machines may make humans redundant and increase social unemployment. For example, chefs are best at cooking, and customer recognition will also bring a sense of value. The use of machines may take away all this. There are some opposing views, however. Saru Jayaraman, co-founder of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, an organization that helps low-income and disadvantaged restaurant workers, pointed out that automation could lead to an increase in restaurant employment. She believes that in California, where automation is more common, restaurant employment The rate has exploded.
4. (To customers) When machine-made food delivery becomes normal, the novel experience of customers will gradually disappear.
To be sure, robotic restaurants will still require the assistance of human employees for a long time to come. First of all, running the whole machine can lead to a lack of human touch in the restaurant. Creator founder Alex Vardakostart uses robots to make meals, but still uses human ordering waiters. "For many people, they want to talk to people." Patrick Maguire, a restaurant consultant in Boston, proposed the idea of automation from an economic and efficiency perspective. It might make sense, but it ultimately hurts the customer experience because machines and humans are not equal in intangible service skills. Second, restaurants need to develop a team to oversee and manage robots. While robots excel at standardizing labor, they struggle to troubleshoot or fix errors on their own.
In the past two years, store navigation and ordering robots have gradually entered the public eye. The food-making robots are still in the "experimental period", especially for Chinese food robots that are more expensive and more difficult to make. When employers choose robots as part of their restaurant services, they should comprehensively consider whether they are needed and which one is most suitable based on factors such as labor costs, machine operating efficiency, and consumer customer attitudes. Any technology is expensive at the beginning, and maintaining focus on the field of food and beverage robots may be the best solution.
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