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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Behind the Bot

Raise a Glass for the New Robot Bartender in Prague

The sitcom, Cheers, probably would have been a lot less funny if the role of Sam the bartender had been played by an robotic, drink-pouring arm. I mean, sure, it can serve up glasses of chablis, but it probably can’t yell out “NORM!”

Reuters reports there’s a new robotic cocktail slinger in town, and it probably doesn’t know your name. At the Cyberdog cafe, which just opened in Prague this week, you aren’t clamoring among throngs of people, trying to get the attention of a disinterested bartender to order your drink. Instead, you place your order via a mobile phone app, and BUDY, an orange, articulating robot arm whirrs to life grabbing and opening bottles of wine, pouring them out and then loading the completed order on to a service tray, which travels overhead on rails before descending so you can pick up your drinks.


(h/t to The Washington Post for the tweet)

Robotic bartenders aren’t new. The Tipsy Robot bar in Las Vegas (of course) has been making robo-cocktails since July 2017, and at our Smart Kitchen Summit: Europe, FoodPairing’s robo-bartendar whipped up personalized boozy concoctions. Not to mention the home robo-bartending appliances hitting the market like Somabar and Bartesian.

Foodpairing powers this robot bartender from The Spoon on Vimeo.

Having worked at a bar, I can see why robots would be a bar owner’s best friend. They pour out precise amounts of liquor (no over-pouring), don’t call in sick and don’t steal from the till. Having patronized many a bar though, it seems like there is something lacking when a bar lacks humans. Bartenders are often funny, great conversationalists, and authentic sources of local information when traveling.

Cyberdog’s robot bartender may be a novelty now, but like its drink pouring robo-cousins Briggo and Cafe X (which just added iced drinks to its menu this week), the tireless, automated robotic precision will become common in high-traffic areas like airports, stadiums and anywhere else people want to grab a drink quickly, and faster service is something a lot of people would “cheers” for.

Cafe in Japan Uses Robots to Create Jobs for People with Disabilities

When we talk about robots in restaurants, we often talk about the human jobs that will be lost to this impending automation. But a cafe that opened in Tokyo this week is actually using robots to create jobs for people with physical disabilities.

The Japan Times reports that the Dawn Avatar cafe in Minato Ward, Tokyo will feature five robots that are roughly 3.9 feet tall that will take orders and serve food. The robots transmit audio and video over the internet so they can be controlled by people with conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) remotely from their homes. Ten remote workers with ALS will get ¥1,000 (~$8.79) an hour in wages for controlling the robots.

The cafe was formed as a joint project between Ory Lab, which develops the robots, Nippon Foundation and ANA Holdings. This iteration of the cafe is just a trial run and will only be open until Dec. 7. The three companies hope to launch a permanent version of the cafe in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.

A shrinking population in japan is creating a labor shortage and robots are being built to do manual, repetitive work like making Takoyaki, a street food made from batter balls and minced octopus, and crêpes (even tri-colored ones!).

As Mike Wolf reported from our last Smart Kitchen Summit: Japan, a lot of innovation in that country comes from R&D departments in larger, established companies. For instance, Sony recently showed off its vision of the home robot chef and has teamed up with Carnegie Mellon University to develop food robots. And Softbank recently hooked up with Toyota to form MONET, a venture that will build autonomous vehicles to do things like deliver robot-made meals.

What I appreciate about Japan’s robot ambitions is how they are tying these programs into real world needs: aging at home, added mobility and in the case of this new cafe, providing new job opportunities for people who need them.

Humans Chefs are Training Robots to Cook Like (and Replace?) Humans

A dentist came to career day at my school when I was a kid, and other than chewing on those colored tablets that highlighted plaque on our teeth, the thing I remember most was him saying that a dentist’s main job was to put themselves out of business. By that he meant, he wanted to teach us to take such good care of our teeth that we didn’t need him anymore.

That’s kind of the feeling I get when it comes to humans and cooking robots. An Atlas Obscura story out this week talks about Georgia Tech scientist David Hu and grad student Hungtang Ko who studied Taiwanese chefs and the specific, efficient motions they use to make perfect fried rice. There is actually a distinct method and combination of movements to keep the rice in constant motion inside a wok, allowing everything to cook evenly without getting burned.

Hu and Ko videotaped the chefs in order to break down their movements with the ultimate goal of training robots to cook fried rice as good as the professionals. As Ko told Atlas Obscura, cooking fried rice is hard work that can result in injuries after years of tossing a wok. Robots also don’t get burned working over a hot stove, or take smoke breaks, or cut themselves, it should be noted.

This story caught my attention because it’s another example in what is becoming a trend: humans training robots to replace humans in the kitchen.

Over in Italy, researchers at the University of Naples Federico II, had famed pizzaiolo Enzo Coccia wear a motion capture suit to record his motions as he made pizza so a robot could learn to replicate them.

Looking more into the future, startups like Covariant are using virtual reality (VR) to train robots. This would allow a Michelin star chef to use VR to capture their movements and make those precise cooking techniques downloadable to a home cooking robot.

Even Sony’s vision of the robotic home kitchen has the human owner instructing his cooking robot how to chop a vegetable.

AI x Robotics x Cooking

Look, obviously someone (read: some human) has to teach a robot to do new things, especially something as complicated as cooking. And while I think there will always be a place for the personal connection a human chef brings, for a lot of our faster, more casual dining experiences, robots will be the new normal. We’re already seeing the rise of food robots as places like Spyce, Caliburger, Creator, and Cafe X expand their operations.

But since we are at the very beginning stages of this robot revolution, we are watching in real time as humans build and train our own replacements. There is something very cool (robots!), but also very chilling about that (fewer jobs!). Who knows, maybe in the end more people will go into dentistry.

JD.com Just Opened its First XCafe Robot Restaurant in China

Earlier this year, Chinese company JD.com said that it planned on opening 1,000 robot-staffed restaurants across China by the year 2020. Well, now it has just 999 more to go as this past weekend, JD.com opened up the XCafe robot restaurant in Tianjin.

Pandaily reports that the new robo-restaurant is 400 square meters and seats up to 100 customers at a time. A combination of robots and artificial intelligence takes orders, prepares food, plates orders and serves meals. Humans aren’t completely out of the equation (ed. note: yet), as a handful are around to assist the robot cooks and refill ingredients.

As we’ve noted, robot restaurants are so hot right now. In China alone, Alibaba runs the Robot.he restaurant and Panasonic and Haidilao formed a joined venture and opened up the first of up to 5,000 robot hot pot restaurants. Here in the U.S. we have Spyce in Boston and the Creator burger joint down in San Francisco.

Worth noting just because of its potential to be a future clue from Puzzle Master Will Shortz: San Francisco is also home to robot coffee kiosk, Cafe X. Will we ever see an XCafe restaurant next to a Cafe X? (Sidenote to our sensitive readers, do not Google “XCafe.”)

There are a number of factors driving the growth of robot-run restaurants. First, robotics themselves are getting better, to the point where they can handle oddly-shaped and softer materials. Second, there is a shortage of workers for sectors like fast food here in the U.S. as well as in places like Japan, where an aging population is leading to labor shortages. Robots won’t burn themselves on a hot stove or fryer, and, as Haidilao pointed out, automation can make it much easier to scale your operations (not as much training, it’s consistent, more software driven results, etc.).

It’s also worth noting the aggressiveness with which Chinese companies are jumping into the robot restaurant business. Haidilao and JD.com together have 6,000 robot restaurants in the works. Spyce, Creator and Cafe X are going to have to fire up the robot factory to stay competitive.

Can Robots Make Food That Tastes Better?

There’s been a lot of talk lately about how robots will change the world of restaurants, and it’s no wonder; with everything from fully robotic restaurants to food robot unicorns, it’s easy to imagine that it won’t be long before the machines take over.

While much of the conversation is about the impact of robots on things like labor and front of house experience, one of the less explored impacts is taste. However, that might soon change because, according to culinary scientist Ali Bouzari, there’s a good chance robot food might actually be better.

Bouzari, who helped with the development of robot burger restaurant Creator as the CEO of food research company Pilot R&D, spoke last week at the reThink Food conference about how high-precision, intelligent machines could potentially create food that’s tastier than the stuff made in a human-powered fast food restaurant.

One example Bouzari gave is how Creator grinds meat. Not only is each Creator burger made of freshly ground beef, but the burgerbot also makes a Blumenburger-like patty consisting of parallel meat strands.

What’s a Blumenburger? It’s the brainchild of (you guessed it) chef Heston Blumenthal, who realized that when you bite into a parallel-stranded burger, the mouthfeel and taste is much better. According to Bouzari, while most of the high-end culinary world has followed Blumenthal’s lead when it comes to parallel-stranded meat burgers, the high-volume requirements of fast-food burgers has meant frozen hockey pucks made of scrambled meat are still par for the course in the vast majority of today’s chain restaurant burgers. But with the Creator, parallel stranded burgers are now possible within a fast food production environment.

Bouzari also believed that robots could do things like mix up sauce patterns on the bun to create more variety, which would help counter the human brain’s natural tendency to tune out a more homogenous sensory experiences with each successive bite.

“This is why you have tasting menus where you are left wanting more,” said Bouzari. “This type of sauce dispenser could conceivably create a pattern on a bun that is one step ahead of your palette,” he said.

While Bouzari said a Creator burger is in some ways a burger that no human could create, he also had a warning about moving too fast into a world of robot-made food.

“Robotics can do some amazing things if we don’t get ahead of ourselves and get carried away and forget that food is a very rudimentary, what-if medium to work with,” said Bouzari. “As long as we remember that, we can let the geniuses who create robots and other technology help us explore [food] step by step.”

Want a Tricolor Crepe? This Robot From Japan Can Make You One

This week, I had a chance to visit wine country to check out what the world of fine dining is thinking about things like food robots. I was down in Napa Valley at the reThink Food conference, where I spent three days talking to chefs, restaurateurs and food execs about how tech will change the culinary world.

Near the end of the conference, I caught up with some familiar faces (or maybe I should say buttons and batter dispensers) to see the latest capabilities of some of my favorite food robots.

The bot I was most excited to see was the Morirobo. The crepe making robot first debuted in the US at the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit, so it was good to see Morirobo (and its inventor and namesake, Hirofumi Mori) back stateside to show off its new multicolor crepe making capability.

As is almost always the case with robots, it’s better to show than tell, so here’s a video of the Morirobo making a large tri-colored crepe:

Morirobo shows off crepe robot making tricolor crepes

World-changing? Maybe not, but I have to say a gigantic multicolored crepe is a crowd pleaser. I can already see the lines forming at fairs and festivals across the US (or even in hotel lobbies as the cool new replacement for that breakfast bar waffle maker) for giant multicolored crepes.

Then there was the latest version of Sally the Salad Robot from Chowbotics. I caught a video of Carnegie Mellon professor of robotics (and inventor of crazy snake monster robots) Howie Choset ordering a salad from Sally:

Sally the salad robot @ reThink Food

After years of development, Sally finally started selling to customers in January of this year. Since its release, Sally has updated software that enables it to make non-salad food like grain bowls, yogurt bowls and more. That’s good news for Sally owners since more meals per day means recouping the foodbot’s $30 thousand price tag much faster.

Since going on sale, there are currently about 40 or so Sallies in the wild. According to a company representative, while corporate cafeterias are the most common location for a Sally, universities (two at Stanford) and airports (Buffalo airport in NY) are other places you can now get a salad (or yogurt bowl) from Sally.

Sony Shows Off its Vision of the Robotic Kitchen in New Promo Video

Earlier this year, consumer electronics giant Sony announced a collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University to research robots for “optimizing food preparation, cooking and delivery.” This week, we got a sense of how those robots might look via a new Sony promo video.

Titled “AI x Robotics x Cooking,” the video shows off two scenarios. The first is an older gentleman who is prepping for what seems to be a Thanksgiving get together with friends and family. In it, the robot assistant, which looks like a long, plain countertop, quietly springs into action as the man tells it that there are more guests coming to the party.

AI x Robotics x Cooking

Robotic arms rise up and chop vegetables by imitating the human. Potatoes are stacked with precision and rather than dumping them into a pot, a clear container comes down over them on the counter and fills with water (evidently a high-tech seal keeps it from leaking out the bottom). There are blender and pouring and cake icing attachments, along with all sorts of sensors that automatically cook the food (though the robot in the video may be trying to murder the family as it says the internal temperature of the served turkey is 146.3 degrees Fahrenheit. Safe cooking temperature for turkey is 165). And if all that automation wasn’t enough, a robotic assistant even slides out from under the counter to serve drinks.

While the robot in this video is definitely still the stuff of science fiction, it highlights how Sony is thinking about robots in the home. Japan has an aging population and robots will play an increasingly important role in providing home care (hence the older man highlighted in the video). But Japan’s shrinking population also means that it is facing a labor shortage in places like restaurants.

And the commercial scenario is what the second half of the Sony video is all about. In it, a hip young couple goes out for a fancy evening out in what kinda looks like the piano lounge of the Death Star. The robot in this setting is round, with people sitting around it like at a bar. Facial recognition is used to bring up the diners’ preferences, and robo-bartender arms whip up a cocktail. This robot also cooks using hot knives to sear while slicing, and creates a delicate edible flower arrangement dessert that will match what you are wearing (just watch the video).

Another thing that struck me while watching this video is how similar the home cooking bot’s form factor is to that of the Moley robot, which is active development now. Both use long, narrow counters and robot arms sliding around on tracks to manipulate food and make meals. That probably makes sense given the limited space available in most kitchens to potentially install a full-fledged robot.

Of course, Sony’s robotic vision is bound to change as they do more research and uncover more use cases. But until then, this video gives us a little guidance as to what our robot future will bring.

Pizza Hut Unveils a Mobile Pizza Factory on a Truck to Speed Up Delivery

In a move to further enhance its delivery strategy, Pizza Hut unveiled a “mobile pizza factory” this week that could potentially be as cool as the name makes it sound.

Dubbed the Tundra PIE Pro, the pizza-making truck, which Pizza Hut created with Toyota, made its first public appearance at Toyota’s 2018 Specialty Equipment Market Association Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

For the autonomous pizza-making machine, Pizza Hut converted a truck bed into the “kitchen,” which features a fridge, a conveyor oven, and two robotic arms powered by a computer. Once an order is placed, one robotic arm takes the chosen pizza from the fridge and puts it in the high-speed, ventless conveyor oven. Once cooked, the pizza leaves the other side of the oven, where robotic arm number two slices and boxes it up. There’s a human in the truck, for driving, but that’s the extent of what they’re required to do. Pizza Hut says the Tundra PIE Pro can cook a pizza in six to seven minutes.

Right now, the machine is just a prototype, though Burquier says Pizza Hut is “looking forward to learning more before making a decision to deploy it into a test market.” He added that “this next-generation technology could lead to a number of potential uses down the road.”

If this were three years ago, I would wonder how practical a mobile pizza-making robot actually was. But for pizza chains nowadays, innovating big seems to be what’s driving business, particularly as companies compete to get faster, hotter pies to your front door. Domino’s is basically a tech company, equipped with chatbots, drones, and the ability to deliver to geographic locations rather than addresses. Little Caesars, who’s in some ways built its business on not delivering, unveiled a pizza portal in September it says could boost customer mobile orders.

Zume Pizza is the most direct competitor in terms of actual tech. The company operates a network of mobile pizza trucks that do a final-cook of the pies in smart ovens, then deliver them via a fleet of scooters.

For Pizza Hut’s new “factory” to be successful, it’ll have to deliver efficiency along with speed, and still ensure the pizzas actually taste good. Mass deployment of these trucks, which aren’t yet scheduled, will be the real test.

Starship Robots Now Autonomously Deliver Packages

Starship announced today that it’s four-wheeled robots now autonomously deliver packages to people at their home and work, in a move that pushes the company beyond food delivery and more into everyday use.

The new service makes Starship something of a middleman in the delivery process. Users download the Starship app and when ordering something like spatulas from Amazon, has the item shipped to a Starship fulfillment center instead of their house. When it arrives at Starship’s facility, the customer is notified and can then schedule the robot delivery to their doorstep or office.

Right now, Starship’s autonomous delivery is only available in a three-mile radius in the town of Milton Keynes in the U.K.. The company says it will be expanding to the Bay Area by the end of this year.

Starship is pitching the service as a way to thwart package theft off your porch or stoop. It certainly isn’t alone in this endeavor. Amazon offers in-trunk or even in-house delivery while you’re away. Walmart and Phrame also enable deliveries to your fridge or car trunk, respectively.

I spoke with Starship CEO, Lex Bayer, who said that his company has 100 robots that have traveled more than 200,000 km and made more than 20,000 autonomous deliveries to date. One stat he shared that surprised me was that in all their deliveries not one of their robots have been vandalized or stolen or had anything stolen from it. It probably helps that their robots are monitored in a central HQ and humans can take over their driving at any time.

Delivery robots are becoming an actual thing… slowly. While rival robot companies like Kiwi are expanding into LA, and Marble continues its march across Texas, true adoption of this technology will hinge on state and city laws. Starship operates in the Bay Area in places like Intuit’s corporate campus, but just to the north, San Francisco has clamped down on commercial robot use.

There is also the question of what will people and towns prefer when it comes to home delivery. Will they want lots of small robots running around on sidewalks, or bigger autonomous delivery vehicles driving down city streets or drones flying overhead?

While those questions seemed like science fiction a few years back, companies like Starship are making them more of a reality we have to deal with (and, to be fair, enjoy the benefits of) right now.

Haidilao and Panasonic Team Up for Robotic Hotpot Restaurant

Haidilao, which operates a hotpot restaurant chain, has partnered with Panasonic to open up a robot-run kitchen in Beijing on October 28. The new automated kitchen will reportedly be used to help Haidilao expand to up to 5,000 locations around the world.

According to Bloomberg, the new Haidilao location will feature robots that “will take orders, prepare and deliver raw meat and fresh vegetables to customers to plop into soups prepared at their tables.”

The two companies say the Beijing Haidilao will be the world’s first restaurant with a fully automated kitchen. We don’t have many details on exactly how the automation technology will work at the new Haidilao, but it seems like Spyce in Boston may already have that mantle.

Regardless of who is or isn’t first, Haidilao’s Beijing robotic restaurant most certainly won’t be the last. Haidilao and Panasonic have formed a new $20 million joint venture called Ying Hai Holding Pte. to manage the automated expansion. They’re also planning to establish 5,000 Haidilao locations, up from the current 360.

A Ying Hai rep told Bloomberg that a shift to automated labor instead of human labor will make that aggressive growth more feasible.

As we have covered quite extensively, robots are all the rage in the restaurant biz around the world. In addition to the aforementioned Spyce (which just raised $21 million), there is also Cafe X‘s coffee-slinging robot barista, Caliburger’s burger-cooking Flippy, Creator‘s burger building robot, and, over in France, Ekim‘s pizza-making robot. Bringing it back to Asia there’s the Seoul, Korea Pizza Hut which uses Bear Robotics’ Penny and Alibaba’s Robot.he restaurant in Shanghai. Elsewhere in China, JD.com plans to open 1,000 of its own robot restaurants.

Robots are really good at repetitive, manual tasks — like chopping or cooking the same thing over and over again. A robot won’t get burned on a hot stove or cut itself (or take a smoke break). So automation make a lot of sense for high-volume restaurants where the menu and cooking procedures are the same every day.

Of course, opening up more than 4,000 automated restaurant locations means fewer jobs for us humans. Right now, that feels like a more abstract problem since robot restaurants are still somewhat of a novelty. But if half of us are cool with robots preparing our food, and it’s cheaper for companies to implement (perhaps translating into cheaper food for us), eating at a restaurant like Haidilao could easily become the new normal — but working at one will become more rare.

Kiwi Delivery Robots Expand into Los Angeles

If you live in the Westwood area of Los Angeles, you can see sunshine, the occasional movie star, and now delivery robots shuttling food to hungry local denizens.

According to the Daily Bruin, Kiwi Campus started rolling out its delivery robots at the beginning of this month. Westwood is home to UCLA, so this particular expansion makes sense given that Kiwi already operates at and around UC Berkeley.

A spokesperson for Kiwi told the Daily Bruin that the company picked UCLA because of the compact nature of the campus. It probably doesn’t hurt that LA typically has great weather throughout the year, thereby reducing at least one bit of complexity for the autonomous, cooler-sized robots to navigate around.

Kiwi is working with 15 Westwood businesses including Subway, Jamba Juice and Veggie Grill. For now, however, robot deliveries are only being made off campus as Kiwi doesn’t have the necessary permits for them to scurry around campus. Until those are sorted out Kiwi will offer a human delivery person for on-campus deliveries.

Campuses in general are becoming a popular option for robot delivery companies. Earlier this year Kiwi rival Starship announced that it would be deploying 1,000 delivery robots by the end of this year and that campuses (both academic and corporate) would be a major avenue of growth for them.

Starting with campuses is a smart idea for robot delivery. They are like starter cities. First, you have a sizeable audience of students and workers who spend most of their time there. Working on campuses (at least private ones) can also help sidestep some of the municipal legal issues that come with running robots on city streets. Campuses are also typically well maintained, so roads and walkways won’t have as many hazards to navigate.

You might think students would be excited to have futuristic, self-driving robots running around their campus. But the reactions reported by the Daily Bruin were much more negative. Rather than a marvel of technology, students quoted saw them as easy targets for theft, causes of increased congestion and basically just something that won’t catch on.

Of course, if I had movie stars in my backyard, I may feel the same way (but maybe with this expansion Uber will give Kiwi a closer look).

Dallas Will Be Home to Cowboys and Delivery Robots

The Dallas city council agreed this week to a six-month pilot program that will put delivery robots on its city streets.

San Francisco-based Marble will provide up to 20 of its squat, cooler-like, four-wheeled robots to cruise Dallas city sidewalks at about 5 miles per hour to make door-to-door deliveries of things like restaurant meals, groceries or even prescriptions.

There are some robotic restrictions in the Dallas pilot. According to the Dallas Morning News, only select city sidewalks will be used during the program, and before the test can begin, Marble needs to map out the delivery areas before it can deploy the robots. Once active, robots must have a human on hand accompanying them (presumably to stop them from going rogue and rising up to take over).

The Lonestar state is starting to get lousy with robots. Dallas joins other Texa-tropolises such as Arlington and Austin in running robot delivery tests. Surprisingly, it’s in Marble’s own backyard that there has been the most resistance to this trend. Last year San Francisco imposed tight restrictions on commercial robot delivery.

Delivery robots have the capacity to drastically alter last mile delivery logistics, especially for densely populated, urban areas. As the technology improves, robots will be able to shed their human babysitters and autonomously scurry around anytime of day or night to drop off everything from baby medicine to a late night burrito, without adding to traffic congestion with more delivery vans and cars.

The robot delivery space itself is also getting crowded. In addition to Marble, other startups such as Starship and Kiwi are running their own robot delivery pilot programs in various cities.

All these robots running about will create sidewalk congestion and entirely new issues as pedestrians get used to sharing space with fleets of mobile machines. But in addition to people getting deliveries, cities will also be getting something valuable out of these robot trials: data. Presumably the data collected by robots (how and when sidewalks are most crowded, which direction people are going, etc.) can be used in city planning to make moving around easier and more efficient.

And, ideally, to make room for more robots.