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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Behind the Bot

Creator Re-Opens With a New Burger Making-Robot Customers Can Control

Creator, the San Francisco restaurant made famous by its burger-making robot, was among the thousands of restaurants shut down by the pandemic (even though it engineered an awesome germ-free airlock delivery system). But the restaurnt announced today that it is back with a new location in Daly City, California, and that is has a brand new robot that customers can control.

Creator’s new robot is a little different from its first incarnation, offering a new array of functionality. The robot is faster, capable of cooking a burger in less than four minutes (when there are no other burgers in the order queue). It also holds 25 different seasonings and sauces that can be dispensed down to the milliliter. Gone from this version of Creator’s robot, however, are the automated toppings like lettuce, tomato and cheese, which humans will no apply to the burger themselves.

But perhaps the biggest change for Creator’s robot is how customers can interact with it. “We’re going to allow anyone to take control of the robot,” Creator Founder Alex Vardakostas told me via video chat this week. Customers can download the Creator mobile app and tweak the seasonings and sauces to their liking. These settings can then be saved and shared, which allows for someone like a well-known chef to “brand” their own burger program that people can replicate.

Another nice new feature is that when you place an order now, Creator’s system will let you know exactly long your wait time will be before your food is ready for pickup.

In addition to all these front-facing changes, Vardakostas said that there are also a number of back-end improvements to the robot that help with production and growth. “The new system is hyper scalable,” he said, “and way more reliable.” It’s these types of back-end changes that will allow Creator to manufacture robots en masse and expand in different ways. Vardakostas said that Creator’s growth will include a mix of owned and operated locations, licensing deals that still carry the Creator brand, and a white-label approach where the machine is modified for another restaurant’s use.

Despite all this technology, Creator remains a very human-focused eating experience. Vardakostas said his team looked at using ordering kiosks, but decided to stick with human order takers. “For a lot of us, we want to talk to a human,” he said.

Speaking of humans, unlike other restaurants, Vardakostas said that finding and hiring workers has not been a problem. “Labor has been a slam dunk. It’s been super easy,” he said. Part of that Vardakostas attributes to Creator being as much a tech company as it is a restaurant company. “Overall, a lot of people want to move into tech,” he said. But there certainly other factors at play, such as not having to work over a hot grill (since the robot does the cooking), Creator also helps with professional development by paying for things like Coursera classes (though a lot of QSRs offer something like that now). Creator does provide an upward path into the technology/robotics sector, however. Vardakostas said that Creator recently promoted two restaurant workers into its development lab.

Creator is part of a larger movement towards automation in the food industry, which has been accelerated by the pandemic. Robots can work all day without taking break, don’t get sick or injured, and can help free up space for social distancing in the kitchen. As a result, there are a number of restaurant robots either at market or on their way. Miso Robotics’ Flippy is working the deep fryers at White Castle. Hyphen just introduced its new Makeline robot assembly system for Sweetgreen-style restaurants. And Picnic just announced the commercial availability of its pizza assembling robot.

For those in the Bay Area who have not yet tried Creator’s robot-made burger (ed. note: They are delicious), you can visit the restaurant’s new location in the Westlake Shopping Center at 514 Westlake, Daly City.

SJW Robotics Aims to Franchise Its Automated Asian Meal Kiosk

One of the emerging trends we’re seeing in food robotics is the fully automated restaurant-in-a-box-style kiosk. These are big, standalone devices that store ingredients and cook up a variety of dishes. Already we’ve seen announcements for such machines from Hyper, Mezli, and Wavemaker Labs with its Nommi. Now you can add SJW Robotics to that list, as the company has plans to franchise its automated restaurant-in-a-box that serves Asian food.

SJW has yet to officially name its automated restaurant concept, but the kiosk itself is 100 sq. ft, holds 36 different ingredients, and uses induction heating. While the outside doesn’t have branding yet, the internal robotics system is referred to as the “RoWok” (robot + wok). It can make one meal in about a minute and a half, though as the machine gets up to speed it can make six meals concurrently, dispensing each one in under a minute. It can make 250 meals before it needs to be refilled.

Nipun Sharma, CEO of SJW Robotics, explained to me by videochat this week that he’s interested in building his own restaurant brand through franchising. People interested in installing one of these kiosks will need to buy the robot for $200,000, pay a $25,000 franchise fee and pay 5 percent royalty.

SJW’s model is different from the approach other players are taking. Hyper plans on licensing its automated pizza technology to bigger brands, while Mezli says that it is more of a food company that plans to open up a number of its own restaurants (which could involve franchising, but Mezli didn’t mention that when I spoke to them earlier this year). SJW’s robot is also a little different in that it appears to be more of an indoor-based system, rather than the ruggedized shipping containers Hyper and Mezli are using that can be installed outside in places like parking lots.

Right now SJW is still developing its prototype. Sharma said that the company has raised an undisclosed round of funding and will be debuting a fully working version of its kiosk this October.

Picnic Announces Commercial Availability and Pricing of its Pizza Robot

Picnic announced today that its pizza-assembling robot is now commercially available for pre-orders and that its robot-as-a-service will cost between $3,500 and $5,000 per month, depending on factors such as menu and volume.

Picnic makes a modular system that uses computer vision and robotics to top pizza dough. Pizza crusts are placed on a conveyor belt, automatically stopping under dispensers to be topped accordingly with ingredients such as sauce, cheese, pepperoni and more. Because it is modular, more nodes can be added to add more toppings.

Obviously restaurant labor is a big issue driving much of the discussion around automation and robotics in food tech. Picnic CEO Clatyon Wood told me by video chat this week that while attracting and retaining labor is still a pain point for his customers, another reason for the move into automation is the digitization of ordering. Whether its online, mobile, or via in-house ordering via kiosk, digital experiences are driving more sales. “If you want to produce high volumes of food, automation is the answer,” Wood said. “Doing that with labor just isn’t an option these days.”

In addition to labor and volume, robot and automation can also provide a number of other benefits for restaurant. Robots consistently dispense the same amount of food every time, resulting in less waste and tighter control over ingredients. Robots can also operate dangerous machinery like a deep fryer or pizza oven without getting injured. And especially important in our ongoing pandemic, not only do robots not get sick, but they create more social distance for other human workers inside a kitchen.

All of these reasons help explain why we are starting to see more food-creation robots come to market. XRobotics and Middleby both make commercial pizza-assembling robots. Last week, Hyphen unveiled its Makeline automated food assembly system for fast casual restaurants like Sweetgreen. And while Miso Robotics’ Flippy is already working the fryer at White Castle, the company recently announced a new automated drink dispenser for QSR drive-thrus.

All of these solutions are still very early on, however, and we don’t yet know if the economics of robotics are truly sustainable. We’ll be seeing more public announcements of robot adoption from restaurant brands this year, so we can start to measure automation’s true efficacy.

For its part, Picnic will manufacture and install existing customer orders throughout the remainder of this year, and new orders will ship in 2022.

New Croatian Restaurant Uses Five GammaChef Robots to Make Meals

Typically when we write about food making robots, they fall into either one of two categories: Smaller countertop devices meant for the home, or larger, more industrial robots meant for restaurant kitchens. But a restaurant called Bots&Pots in Zagreb, Croatia, is combining those two ideas and using a number of GammaChef cooking robots to make meals for its customers.

GammaChef, also based in Croatia (and also a former Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase finalist), makes the eponymous robot capable of creating one-pot dishes such as stews, risottos and pastas. The device stores ingredients, dispenses them into the pot, and stirs the food as it cooks. According to Total Croatia News, customers at Bots&Pots choose their meal via touchscreen at one of five GammaChefs inside the restaurant and they’ll be able to see their meal prepared. According to the story, with five robots running, the restaurant can make up to 60 meals per hour. Human chefs at Bots&Pots are also creating new recipes for the robot to “learn.”

We don’t have a ton of other details about Bots&Pots right now. Based on the restaurant’s Facebook page, it appears as though it is in more of a showroom mode, and not quite open to the public yet. A translation of a Bots&Pots Facebook post on August 14 reads “Soon….Zagreb, then the world 🤟😇.” The restaurant also mentions franchising in earlier Facebook posts, so it appears that Bots&Pots is looking to take the concept to more stores in more locations.

What’s intriguing about Bots&Pots is its robot deployment strategy. The restaurant is foregoing one big, self-contained autonomous kiosk (like the DaVinci Kitchen) in favor smaller consumer appliances. This approach could help save money up front, because there is no big installation or training that needs to happen around a large robot. Not needing to build around a big bulky robot also means that as Bots&Pots franchises out, the concept can adapt to just about any real estate because you just plunk the GammaChefs down on some countertops.

Will this be a strategy other restaurants adopt? Could we see other home cooking robots like the Oliver or Nymble’s Julia be used in bulk at eateries? We’ll have to see how the nuts and bolts of Bots&Pots works out.

Q&A: RoboEatz on the Importance of Robotics in Restaurants of the Future

Thanks in part to the pandemic and the changing restaurant experience, there is more interest in food robots these days. While we’re not yet at the point where counters, kitchens, and drive-thrus are fully manned by these bots, there is a steadily growing number of choices when it comes to machines that can speed up and/or smooth out operations, save on costs, and provide a truly contactless meal creation and pickup experience.

One such offering is the RoboEatz Ark 03. it is a standalone kiosk that contains an articulating arm, fresh ingredients (including soups and salad dressings), an induction cooker and cubbies to hold pickup orders. When a customer places an order (via phone or tablet), the robot arm grabs ingredients, places them in the rotating induction cooker, and puts the finished meal container in a cubby.

RoboEatz’ CEO Alex Barseghian will share more on this exciting new world of restaurant tech at The Spoon’s upcoming Restaurant Tech Summit on August 17. As a teaser, we recently got some thoughts from him about restaurant robotics, which you can read below. And if you haven’t already, grab a ticket to the virtual show here.

This Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity.

1. What problem does Roboeatz solve for restaurants/the restaurant industry?

The robot solves multiple things in one system. The ARK 03 can hold 80 ingredients allowing for 1,000 menu items to be made. Anyone from a salad concept to a pasta bar QSR or an Asian restaurant chain can leverage it. It self cleans the entire system and utensils, can dish out meals every 20 seconds and can serve 1,000 meals before it needs replenishment. It reduces waste, makes more consistent and great tasting food and labour shortages are resolved.

2. What is the biggest change in terms of the restaurant industry’s approach towards technology as a result of the pandemic?

There are a number. Touchless interaction is becoming more vital. Everything from digital menu boards, touchless payments and curbside pick have increased in demand during the pandemic. Chains are going to look to automate key areas of the kitchen or replace the whole kitchen to reduce mundane tasks. There is global labour shortage for the restaurant industry and technology is going to be a vital way to solve for that problem. 

3. Where do robotics and automation make the most sense in the restaurant industry (e.g., back of house, standalone machines, etc.)?

They can be either back of house or full standalone systems. The application will depend on the environment. For example, business canteens, student campuses, mining camps, airports and transit hubs can drop in a standalone machine like the ARK03. But if you have a casual fine dining chain with a massive infrastructure, you will take much more of an iterative approach to technology. Test and learn which pain points need to be fixed and automated. Only after can you scale — which takes time and extensive resources.

4. What is the biggest challenge for restaurants right now when it comes to digitization? 

The whole continuum of the journey is a challenge because there are so many aspects to digitization. From the ease of consumer ordering and personalization on the mobile phone to the end point of picking something in store, systems interacting with each other is a very large pain point.  

5. What are you most excited about when it comes to the impact of restaurant technology?

That we, as a society, can rely on is great quality food that is produced safely and without much food waste. We have a profitable model that is scalable for multiple restaurant verticals, from QSRs to managed food service companies with the aforementioned goal in mind.

6. What do you think the restaurant industry will look like in five years?

The fine dining restaurants will deploy automation that is not visible to customers.  Managed food service companies will deploy full systems in multiple verticals they service, especially where grab and go or 24/7 food is needed. QSR chains will have either a full system or have hybrid back of house functions. It is a very exciting time.  

Ono Food Rebrands as Hyphen, Launches Makeline Food Assembly Robot to Work in Tandem with Humans

One of the questions that always comes up when talking about food robots is what will happen to the human workers. Coming out of stealth mode today, Hyphen‘s answer is to have its robot work alongside people. Well, technically, to have the robots work underneath them..

Hyphen launched its Makeline assembly robot today, which is meant to help fast casual restaurants quickly and accurately make meals for pick-up and delivery without taking up any additional space. Perhaps the easiest way to think about the Makeline is to picture a Sweetgreen (Hyphen has not announced a deal with Sweetgreen, I’m just using it as an illustrative example). When you’re physically at a Sweetgreen, you order at a counter, and a worker there goes down the line with you, adding the ingredients you want to your meal.

With Hyphen’s Makeline, that counter of ingredients is still there, as is the person. But the magic happens underneath the counter, where a robotic system dispenses ingredients from the same trays used above the counter to assemble electronic orders. In effect, the Makeline is doubling the output of a restaurant’s counter system with humans taking in-person orders and the robot handling off-prem ones.

In addition to saving space, the Makeline is also modular, so restaurants can lengthen and shorten it as needed. Additional modules can be for more ingredients, and there are beverage dispensing modules, re-heating modules, mixing modules, lid and label modules, and staging modules that hold multiple items for pickup.

Hyphen’s Makeline is able to make 350+ meals per hour, and the initial cost is $10,000 for implementation and integration. After that there is an undisclosed per-use fee. In a video chat last week, Hyphen Co-Founder and CEO Stephen Klein told me that his company has signed deals with eight partners, seven of which are fast casual restaurants and one of which is a co-packer for a grocer.

But it’s not just a new robot that Hyphen is debuting today, Hyphen is actually the new name and direction for what was once Ono Foods Co. Ono made a robotic smoothie making system that fit in the back of a van so it could move to different spots throughout the day. Ono Food also had ambitions to be an owned and operated restaurant brand. But Ono launched in October of 2019 which, of course, was just months before the pandemic hit the U.S. in full force. So Ono retrenched, laid off staff and pivoted.

Klein said Hyphen was able to re-purpose its original technology. “We leveraged the same technology to make smoothies to make plates,” he said. Additionally, the company hasn’t lost those mobile roots, as Klein said Hyphen’s Makeline can still fit in a van. “The technology is still mobile [and] can fit in van or ghost kitchen, it doesn’t matter the environment,” he said. “A lot of our partners want to be in spaces that don’t have four walls. It might make sense to have a mobile kitchen.”

As it moves from smoothies to food assembly, however, Hyphen is facing a more competitive market offering a variety of solutions. Picnic‘s assembly robot offers a similar modular design that will eventually be able to accommodate foods like burritos and sandwiches, but it only works with pizza toppings right now. Karakuri and RobotEatz are more autonomous standalone kiosks, but can be customized to create a wide variety of hot and cold dishes.

The biggest selling point for Hyphen, however, will most likely be the space it saves restaurants. By adding a robotic layer to existing dish assembly workstations, Hyphen not only answers the question of what to do with human workers (keep them), but also solves the problem of where a new robotic system would go.

Starship’s Delivery Robots Roll Out to Four More College Campuses

It’s back-to-school season here in the U.S, and for an increasing number of students, that means getting back to robot food delivery on campus. Along those lines, Starship announced today that it is growing its roster of college campus clients with the addition of robot delivery at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), University of Kentucky (UK), University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Daytona Beach, FL campus.

Starship makes cooler-sized robots that autonomously scurry along sidewalks to bring food and other goods to people. Customers order through the Starship mobile app (depending on location can use credit/debit card or student meal plan), and can watch the robot on a map as it makes its journey. Once it arrives, customers unlock the cargo compartment using the Starship app.

According to a press release sent to The Spoon, robot delivery service has already kicked off at UNR and Embry-Riddle. The University of Kentucky will get its robots next week and UIC’s program will start this fall. Starship provided the following breakdown of its added robot delivery:

  • UIC: 25 robots, with 11 merchants including Starbucks, Panda Express and Freshii
  • UK: 20 robots, starting with 7 merchants including Starbucks, Subway and Auntie Anne’s
  • UNR: 20 robots, with 14 merchants including Panera Bread, Habit Burger and Baja Fresh
  • Embry-Riddle: 20 robots, with 10 merchants including Starbucks, QDOBA, Flight Cafe and Legacy Walk Wings Food Truck

We’ve been chronicling the rise of Starship’s college delivery program since the company kicked it off at George Mason University back in January of 2019. Starship now serves nearly 20 different campuses in 15 states.

Starship is not the only robot delivery service hitting colleges however. Last year, Kiwibot, which makes its own cooler-sized rovers, partnered with Sodexo to bring robot food delivery to the University of Denver campus. While both companies use robots, there is a difference in the user experience for each service. Kiwibot integrates with the Sodexo food ordering app, while Starship requires users to download its own mobile app.

Starship weathered the pandemic last year despite forced closures of colleges and universities across the country. Having lived through that experience, I wouldn’t be surprised to see even more colleges adopt robot-powered delivery this school because of its contactless nature.

Tortoise Delivery Robots Rolling Into Dallas via Vroom Delivery

Tortoise‘s sidewalk delivery robots are making their way to Dallas, Texas, thanks to a new pilot program with Vroom Delivery and Urban Value Corner Store announced today. Launching in the coming months, the new service will use Tortoise’s teleoperated robots to deliver goods like milk and eggs, as well as snacks and alcohol.

Tortoise is different other players in the robot delivery space like Starship and Kiwibot. Tortoise’s robot is much bigger than those cooler-sized robots and able to carry 100 pounds of goods. Tortoise’s robots are also fully driven by remote human operators, as the company chose to forego the autonomous driving option in order to sidestep local regulatory issues around self-driving vehicles to get to market faster.

Another benefit of having human operators could be when it comes to robotic beer and alcohol delivery. Tortoise’s hefty robots are actually perfect for carrying beverages like cases of beer typically purchased at a convenience store. As Tortoise Co-Founder and President Dmitry Shevelenko explained to me by phone this morning, while details and regulations still need to be worked out, there is a scenario in which the human operator of the Tortoise robot could assist in providing ID verification on age restricted purchases.

Contactless delivery from robots like Tortoise could find increased interest as the COVID-19 Delta variants keep the pandemic top of mind here in the U.S. Though online grocery shopping, which requires curbside pickup or delivery, has come down from its record highs during the summer of last year, it is still much higher than pre-pandemic levels. Experts from Brick Meets Click anticipate that many consumers will stick with their new grocery e-commerce habits.

This deal with Vroom and Urban Value marks another publicly announced delivery deal this year for Tortoise. In March of this year, Albertsons said it would use Tortoise robots for grocery delivery at two Northern California Safeway locations.

According to the press announcement, Urban Value will launch its first Tortoise delivery location from its downtown Dallas location. Customers can use Vroom’s e-commerce platform to place their order for robot delivery from Urban Value. Vroom said that it is making Tortoise deliveries available to other convenience stores across the country.

Video: See Kitchen Robotics’ Beastro Ghost Kitchen Robot in Action

It’s one thing to write about food making robots — but it’s so much better when you can see food-making robots in action. Which is why it’s cool to see the video Kitchen Robotics released this week of its awesomely named Beastro robot making meals.

Kitchen Robotics is in the business of automating ghost kitchens with hardware and software tools. Beastro is its all-in-one standalone kiosk. Similar to RoboEatz, Gastronomous and Karakuri, the Beastro stores all the ingredients, then dispenses them into a bowl where they are mixed and heated into a meal. Beastro is approximately 12 ft. long by 6 ft. wide and 7 ft. tall, and weighs 1,790 lbs. It can make 45 dishes an hour including Italian and Asian cuisines, as well as soups, salads and more.

We got a glimpse at the Beastro just about a year ago with a teaser video, but that didn’t show the robot working with actual food. This time around you get to see Beastro’s robotic grippers holding the bowl, sliding it around as it adds ingredients, and using the spinning induction cooker to prepare the dish.

Beastro™ a Robotic Kitchen by Kitchen Robotics

Adding robots to a ghost kitchen can make a lot of sense. Robots can work odd (or all) hours, and churn out meals in minutes. They can also be tied in to ordering systems so meals can automatically (and algorithmically) be coordinated, cooked and queued based on when a delivery driver will arrive to pick up the food.

As such, we are starting to see robots creep into ghost kitchen operations. In February of this year, DoorDash acquired food robot company, Chowbotics. At the time of the acquisition, we wrote that DoorDash could use Chowbotics’ robots to assemble its own brand of fresh food for delivery from the DashMart convenience stores. This prediction seems to have borne out as earlier this month, HNGRY reported that DoorDash was indeed creating its own line of private label salad bowls and microwaveable meals with Chowbotics tech.

If DoorDash can make a go of its new robotics program, it’s probably safe to assume that other delivery services will follow suit. Gopuff, for instance, is adding ghost kitchens to its delivery network and has reportedly raised an additional billion dollars. That could buy a few Beastros, for sure.

Will LG Make a Meal Out of its new Outdoor/Indoor Delivery Robot?

Consumer electronics giant LG unveiled a new indoor/outdoor rover robot at the Ubiquitous Robot 2021 conference yesterday in South Korea. The company aims to test the new robotic platform at the end of this year.

Though a number of Korean news outlets reported the story, there weren’t a ton of details available about the new robot. We know it was developed in conjunction with MIT Associate Professor Sangbae Kim at LG Boston Robotics Lab, and that the four-wheeled robot can adjust the gap between its wheels to adapt quickly to uneven terrain for a smoother ride.

But there are still plenty of questions unanswered questions. We don’t know what level of autonomy the robot has. For example, is it completely self-driving or is it teleguided? Will it be available outside of Korea, and if so, when? What industries is LG looking to sell this robot to? Given the robot’s ability to minimize jostling as it travels, food and meal delivery seems like a no-brainer. Additionally, the Aju Business Daily reported that LG released the following statement along with its new robot: “The integrated next-generation delivery robot is the result of our preemptive response to customers’ increased demands for non-face-to-face services.” Meal delivery was among the first services to go contactless during the pandemic last year, so it makes sense that such delivery would be on LG’s roadmap.

This isn’t LG’s first foray into robotics. In January of this year the company debuted its BaristaBot to serve coffee to workers at LG’s headquarters in Seoul. Last December, the company began using its CLOi robots to make deliveries from convenience stores to people inside its LG Science Park in Seoul. And in July of 2020, LG partnered with Woowa Brothers and the Korea Institute for Robot Industry Advancement to develop robot waiters.

What makes this latest robot more interesting than its previous robo-plays, however, is how it could alter the existing robot delivery market. Startups such as Starship, Serve and Kiwibot have been making robo-deliveries for years at this point, but what neither of those companies have is scale. LG is a giant electronics company that is better equipped to mass produce these rovers and bring their costs down. With its global reach, LG could then sell or lease robots more cheaply than existing robot companies to third-party delivery services (Uber Eats, DoorDash, etc.). You can kind of see a blueprint for such a deal in the recent Grubhub/Yandex partnership. Additionally, a company with the brand recognition and reputation of LG could also help spur adoption from reluctant potential partners and get more robots making deliveries.

NOTE: The LG image featured in this post is via The Korea Bizwire.

Researchers Create Simulator to Help Robots Wield Knives

Robotics researchers from NVIDIA and the University of Southern California (USC) announced today the first differentiable simulator for robotic cutting, or DiSECt for short. This new simulator can predict forces that will act on the knife as it pushes and slices through soft materials like fruits and vegetables.

Your first reaction might be, why do they need all that simulator science when you can just install a sharp blade on a robotic arm and smash it down? That’s certainly one solution, but part of the reason robot researchers like NVIDIA, and Sony and Panasonic all work with food is because food is oddly-shaped, has different textures and is delicate. If a robot can successfully work with soft objects like food, it can carry those techniques over to other applications like surgery (where plunging knives down is frowned upon).

Cutting through food with precision and care is actually quite complex. It requires feedback, adaptation, motion control and parameter setting as the knife makes its way through the object. Additionally, since each piece of fruit or vegetable is unique, the robot needs to adjust its cutting with each new object.

NVIDIA shared with us an advanced look at an article explaining the DiSECt research that was recently presented at 2021 Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) conference. I’m not going to lie, it is dense and jargon heavy with paragraphs like this:

DiSECt implements the commonly used Finite Element Method (FEM) to simulate deformable materials, such as foodstuffs. The object to be cut is represented by a 3D mesh which consists of tetrahedral elements. Along the cutting surface we slice the mesh following the Virtual Node Algorithm [4]. This algorithm duplicates the mesh elements that intersect the cutting surface, and adds additional, so-called “virtual” vertices on the edges where these elements are cut. The virtual nodes add extra degrees of freedom to accurately simulate the contact dynamics of the knife when it presses and slices through the mesh.

But rather than focusing on the specifics of the research, there are some broader takeaways anyone in food tech can appreciate. First, DiSECt illustrates the continued importance of simulation and synthetic data in training robots. NVIDIA has actually built a kitchen as a training ground for its robots where it uses synthetic data and computerized simulation to virtually teach a robot tasks like identifying and picking up a box of Cheeze-Its. Similarly, DiSECt trains a robot to use a knife through simulation first, which can then be applied to the cutting object in the real world.

Additionally, giving robots added abilities will make them more useful in taking over dangerous tasks like repetitive cutting. Right now, robots in restaurants are frying foods and even making pizzas, but they aren’t doing more highly skilled, precision tasks such as cutting and slicing. A robot can’t get injured while cutting and could bring more safety to restaurant kitchens.

The good news for those interested in this type of cutting-edge research is that NVIDIA and USC are not the only companies doing work in this field. In 2019, researchers from Iowa State University published a similar paper on the intricacies of robot slicing.

DiSECt: A Differentiable Simulation Enginefor Autonomous Robotic Cutting

Pazzi Opens Robotic Pizza Restaurant in Paris

Pazzi announced earlier this week that it has opened its first official robotic pizza restaurant in Beaubourg in Paris, France. This is the second robot pizza restaurant for the company, following a pilot facility it opened in a Parisian suburb in 2019.

Dubbed the “Pazziria,” the almost fully autonomous kiosk uses robotic arms to and other bits of automation to flatten dough, apply sauce and toppings, places pizzas in the oven and slice and box them up. The Pazzi robots are able to prepare a pizza in 45 seconds, can bake six pizzas at a time and produce 80 pizzas per hour.

The robots are fully enclosed behind a wall of glass and there are no humans helping out. Orders can be placed via web app or touchscreen kiosk at the restaurant. Customers can watch as the robots whirl about making each pizza, and can retrieve their order from a marked cubby.

There is a question with every food robot startup over whether to make their machines look more like “robots” by using articulating arms, or to make them more like industrial machines where the automation is more hidden away. Other players in the robot pizza space such as xRobotics, Middleby and Picnic are all definitely on the more industrial side. Their machines are meant to be tucked away in kitchens, cranking out pizzas and are not on display for customers.

Pazzi is going a different direction than those other companies and leaning into the theatricality of its robots. Like the Creator restaurant (RIP), Pazzi places its robots front and center and fully visible to customers and passers by. The homepage of Pazzi’s website is even splashed with “Come for the show, stay for the pizza.”

There’s actually never been a better time for Pazzi to launch its robo-restaurant. The pandemic, which is still very much a part of our lives around the world, has restauranteurs and customers looking for more contactless ways of food prep and delivery. Since Pazzi uses robots, there is not human-to-human contact making and selling pizzas. Pazzi’s robots can also run continuously without taking a break. (They are monitored remotely should anything break down.) Pazzi’s robots also means that it doesn’t have to hire, train and pay human workers, which is good for Pazzi’s bottom line. That, however, also means there are fewer jobs, creating complex socio-economic quandaries that still need to be worked out.

With two sites now up and running in France, Pazzi is eyeing international expansion and says it will be opening a location in Switzerland (perhaps next to a Smyze drinks station?). For those in Paris looking wanting to try out this robo-pizza, Pazziria Beaubourg is located at 42 Rue Rambuteau, and is open seven days a week from 11 a.m. to midnight.