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Behind the Bot

November 4, 2020

Woowa Delivery Robots to Access Buildings and Ride Elevators Next Year

If you want to know what the future of robot delivery looks like, then take a look at what Woowa Brothers is doing in Korea. The Aju Business Daily has a story up today about how Woowa is creating new partnerships that will allow its robots to pass through a building’s security as well as take an elevator to travel between floors.

In August of this year, Woowa’s “Dilly” robots started making limited food deliveries to a multipurpose housing complex in Gwanggyo, Suwon city. But in this scenario, when it arrives, the robot waits at the entrance of the complex and the resident who placed the order must come down to retrieve their items.

As Aju reports, Woowa has partnered with networking platform developer HDC I-Controls and Hyundai Elevator to make a Dilly’s delivery more direct. With HDC I-Controls, Woowa’s robot will be able to automatically get through a front door’s security system and enter the building. Once inside, the connection with Hyundai Elevator will allow the robot to automatically travel in between floors of a building. This functionality is expected to roll out next year.

While Aju didn’t mention how the robots navigate to a recipient’s front door, that seems doable either though GPS on a user’s phone or QR codes placed on doors.

On it’s face, this is a really cool idea. Not only could robots enter a building and take the elevator on its own, but food orders in the same building could be clustered so robots could make multiple deliveries with one trip.

But the bigger reason we’re highlighting this story is that it’s another example of automated systems starting to daisy chain with one another. We talked about this during our food robotics panel at our Smart Kitchen Summit last month. In that talk, we outlined scenarios where something like a Picnic robot makes a pizza, a Bear Robotics Servi bot brings that pizza out to a delivery bot like Kiwi, which the brings it out directly to a person.

In Woowa’s case, the connections are more software related, but it’s still all about bringing more automation to the meal journey. You could see similar functionality coming to the U.S., especially at college dorms and apartment buildings. This type of automated travel path could also spur more delivery cubbies like Minnow’s for buildings without an elevator. A robot could place the order inside a temperature controlled locker for the person to pick up when they are ready.

The point is that we are just scratching the surface of what robotic meal delivery is capable of. These types of interplay between automated services will only increase making our robot-powered future seem not that far off.

November 2, 2020

Walmart to Stop Using Bossa Nova’s Shelf-Scanning Robots

After touting their efficiency and effectiveness for years, Walmart has decided to stop using Bossa Nova’a autonomous shelf-scanning robots to monitor inventory, according to a scoop in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Almost exactly three years ago, Walmart announced it was deploying Bossa Nova’s ‘bots to 50 stores. At that time, the company hailed the robots’ efficiency, saying the machines were 50 percent more productive and three times faster than a human at the job of taking inventory. In April of 2019, Walmart announced it was broadening Bossa Nova’s use to 300 locations, and just in January of this year, Walmart bumped the deployment number up to 1,000 stores.

Of course, shortly after that January announcement, the pandemic hit, which precipitated a massive surge in online grocery shopping. And this seems to have had an unintended consequence when it comes to automation, writes the Journal:

Walmart ended the partnership because it found different, sometimes simpler solutions that proved just as useful, said people familiar with the situation. As more shoppers flock to online delivery and pickup because of Covid-19 concerns, Walmart has more workers walking the aisles frequently to collect online orders, gleaning new data on inventory problems, said some of these people. The retailer is pursuing ways to use those workers to monitor product amounts and locations, as well as other automation technology, according to the people familiar with the situation.

Additionally, the Journal reported, Walmart was concerned with how shoppers were reacting to seeing the six-foot tall robots roaming the aisles.

The pitch from Bossa Nova and other players like Simbe Robotics and Badger Technologies is that shelf-scanning robots can provide a more accurate and up-to-date accounting of inventory on store shelves. As the CEO of Simbe Robotics told me in August, better data about what’s in stock can alleviate product outages like those experienced during the panic buying early on in the pandemic.

At the same time Walmart is retreating on shelf-scanning robots, other retailers are increasing their use. Schnuck Markets is expanding the use of Simbe’s Tally robot to 62 locations across the Midwest. And Woodman’s Market in Wisconsin will add Badger Technologies’ shelf scanning robot to all of its 18 stores and Illinois and Wisconsin by the end of this year.

For all their advantages, robots were always kind of a stopgap technology for grocers. Robots still need time to go up and down store aisles, and as noted above, interact with human shoppers. Cameras, sensors and the burgeoning world of cashierless checkout technology can do much the same in real time (or near real time) without intruding on a shoppers’ space.

Walmart debuted its IRL store last year that uses cameras and computer vision to monitor inventory. Trax installs cameras on ceilings and store shelves to do much the same. And lineless checkout companies like Grabango monitor what people are taking from store shelves and charging them automatically as they leave the store.

The Journal reports that Bossa Nova, which has raised more than $100 million in funding, laid off 50 percent of its staff after the Walmart contract was terminated.

We have reached out to both Walmart and Bossa Nova and will update as we hear back.

UPDATE: A Walmart rep sent us the following statement via email:

We’ve worked with Bossa Nova for five years and together we learned a lot about how technology can assist associates, make jobs easier and provide a better customer experience. This was one idea we tried in roughly 500 stores just as we are trying other ideas in additional stores. We will continue testing new technologies and investing in our own processes and apps to best understand and track our inventory and help move products to our shelves as quickly as we can.

SECOND UPDATE: We received the following statement from Bossa Nova CEO Sarjoun Skaff via email:

“I cannot comment on Walmart, however the pandemic has forced us to streamline our operations and focus on our core technologies. We have made stunning advances in AI and robotics. Our retail AI is the industry’s best and works as well on robots as with fixed cameras, and our hardware, autonomy and operations excelled in more than 500 of the world’s most challenging stores. With the board’s full support, we continue deploying this technology with our partners in retail and in other fields.”

November 2, 2020

A Roundup of Pizza Robots

To borrow from The White Stripes, “I’ve said it once before but it bears repeating now.” If you want to know the future of food tech, look at what’s happening in pizza.

Because of its ubiquity, relative ease to make, and transportability (i.e. great for delivery!), pizza is a perfect food when it comes to testing out new technologies across the meal journey.

One technology in particular being applied to pizza making is robotics. Automated pizza making appears to be all the rage nowadays with a number of players heating up the space. Here’s a quick rundown of the key companies bringing robotics to the world of pizza:

PICNIC
Funding: $20.7 million
Solution: Picnic makes a modular system of robots that precisely apply toppings like cheese, pepperoni and more to pre-formed dough. Picnic’s robot can assemble 300 pies in an hour that are cooked separately, and just last week the company debuted its second-gen robot, which provides greater visibility into the machine. Picnic’s solution isn’t just for pizza, however, it can also be used to assemble foods like burritos and Subway-style sandwiches.

MIDDLEBY/Lab 2 Fab
Funding: Publicly traded
Solution: Middleby’s Lab 2 Fab publicly debuted its new PizzaBot 5000 at our Smart Kitchen Summit last month. The enclosed cabinet robot applies three base ingredients (e.g. sauce, cheese, pepperoni), and can assemble a pizza in under a minute, where it can be moved by a human or a robot into an oven. The PizzaBot 5000 will go into beta in early 2021.

PIESTRO
Funding: completed $1 million in equity crowdfunding, seeking another $5 million
Solution: Piestro is a new startup looking to build a robotic pizza vending machine. The planned machine can accept orders through a mobile app and deliver a hot pizza in under three minutes. The company also recently announced a partnership with Kiwibot that allows that company’s eponymous delivery robot to retrieve pizzas from Piestro and deliver them to customers.

PAZZI
Funding: €12.2 million (~$14.9M USD)
Solution: Of all the companies listed here, PAZZI’s (formerly EKIM) pizza maker is the more “robotic,” with multiple articulating arms that top the pizza, put it in the oven, remove a slice it. PAZZIs are roughly 45 sq. meters and meant to be automated standalone kiosks. The first PAZZI went live in France last year.

This list doesn’t even include the pizza vending machines that are popping up from API Tech, Basil St. and Bake Xpress. We didn’t formally include those in this roundup because they are just re-heating frozen pizzas, not performing a series of different tasks to create a pizza on the spot.

With its universal appeal (who doesn’t like pizza?), pizza will remain a medium that pushes food technology forward that other types of cuisine will benefit from.

October 27, 2020

White Castle Expanding Use of Flippy the Robot to 10 More Locations

White Castle is adding 10 more Flippy Roars to its roster, Miso Robotics announced today. The expanded order for more Flippy robots comes after a successful pilot at one White Castle location that was announced this past July.

Through a combination of robotics, computer vision and AI, Miso’s Flippy ROAR can operate both grills to cook hamburgers as well as fry stations. The entire system is suspended on rails from above, and White Castle had been using Flippy as a fry cook. According to today’s press announcement, Flippy made an average of 360 baskets of fried food per day during its pilot with White Castle, with a total of roughly 14,580 lbs. of food and more than 9,720 baskets made.

In addition to Flippy making food in a more contactless fashion, something consumers are more aware of than ever during this pandemic, Flippy also creates more social distance among employees in the kitchen, and frees workers up to pay more attention to order fulfillment and delivery. Today’s press release noted that White Castle is open 24 hours a day, which creates its own set of staffing challenges, with late night shifts harder to fill. Because it’s a robot, Flippy can work around the clock without needing a break (or calling in sick).

White Castle’s Flippy expansion comes less than a month after Miso announced the general commercial availability of its robot. In addition to wider availability, Miso is hoping to attract new customers beyond large QSRs with its new financing option, which eliminated the $30,000 up front cost and replaced it with a $2,000 a month subscription.

The pandemic has helped accelerate interest in food robotics, and we’ve seen a flurry of activity even just this month. KFC Korea partnered with Hyundai to develop fried chicken making robots. Walmart added a Blendid smoothie making robot to one of its stores. And Costa Coffee officially took over Briggo and its automated coffee kiosks.

White Castle did not disclose where its new Flippy robots will be located, only saying they will be delpoyed in 2021. For Miso, this new contract — and, by extension, this vote of confidence in its technology — could also help boost the company’s equity crowdfunding efforts. The company is looking to raise a $30 million Series through SeedInvest, and to date has only raised a little more than $9 million.

October 26, 2020

Briggo’s Coffee Haus Becomes Costa Coffee BaristaBot

It looks like British coffee chain and Coca-Cola subsidiary Costa Coffee has acquired Austin, TX-based coffee automation company, Briggo.

We are still hunting down an official announcement, but the Briggo website is now re-branded as Costa Coffee (hat tip to the Food By Robots Twitter account). Briggo’s CoffeeHaus automated kiosk has been replaced with the Costa Coffee BaristaBot. Briggo also made an announcement on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/DrinkBriggo/status/1320725811633283074?s=20

We have reached out to Briggo to find out more.

To date, Briggo had raised $19 million in funding. Its coffee robot was among a new wave of standalone automated kiosks that were looking to re-invent the vending machine by combining robotics with higher-end food. Part of Briggo’s pitch, when it first started out, was that in addition to building its coffee robot, it was also a coffee company that selected and roasted its own beans.

Briggo had Coffee Hauses up and running in a number of locations around Austin, including two at the Austin-Bergstrom Airport and one at the San Francisco International Airport. Briggo had formed a partnership with SSP America last year to open up new kiosks in 25 airports over the course of this year and next. In January of this year, Briggo’s CEO told me that his company was going to open up five new loations in Q1 of this year.

That, of course, was before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and airline travel was decimated. So how many of those locations went up or are still live is unknown. Rival robot coffee kiosk company, Cafe X, shuttered its remaining airport locations and laid off staff. That said, Cafe X has re-focused and has plans to deploy 150 robots across Asia over the next two years.

With its deep pockets, Costa Coffee has the resources to expand and operate more kiosks than Briggo could have on its own. This story is developing and we will update as we learn more.

October 23, 2020

KFC Partners with Hyundai in Korea for Chicken Frying Robots

Hyundai Robotics announced today that it has partnered with KFC Korea are to develop robots that can cook chicken, reports The Korea Herald.

There weren’t many details in the story other than that “KFC Korea will provide its stores and cooking know-how under the deal,” according to The Herald.

However, the KFC Korea/Hyundai partnership reinforces two trends we’ve been seeing over the past couple of years. First is the continued partnership between massive automation companies and various food-related entities to develop food-related robots. The second is that — wow — who’d a thunk that KFC companies would be leading the charge into the future of food tech?

We’ve known for a while that food presents an interesting challenge for roboticists. Because it is often oddly-shaped and susceptible to bruising and damage, food is a good test case for robot manipulation. If a robot is sensitive enough carefully handle an egg, it can definitely apply that skill to other fragile materials in more industrial settings.

The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has added another reason for big companies to get into food robots, as restaurants and eaters seek out more contactless experiences. As a result, restaurant interest in food automation is surging. The reasons are pretty straightforward, robot cooks don’t get sick, can work around the clock, and can create more social distance in the kitchen.

Hyundai and KFC is the latest food company + industrial conglomerate partnership we’ve seen form over the past couple of years. Previously Panasonic teamed up with China’s Haidilao hot pot restaurant chain to open a robot-run kitchen, and LG is working with Korea’s Woowa Brothers to develop server robots.

But just as, if not more interesting are the moves international KFC companies are making when it comes to restaurant tech innovation. In addition to KFC Korea’s forthcoming chicken frying robots, KFC Russia has a Moscow location using a network of devices and conveyor belts to automate meal service, and the company announced in July that it was launching an initiative to use 3D bioprinters to create chicken meat.

KFC may not be able to say it’s finger-lickin’ good any longer (thank you, pandemic), but the company’s finger is definitely on the pulse of food automation.

October 22, 2020

Simbe Robotics Announces New Tally 3.0 Shelf-Scanning Robot

Simbe Robotics today announced the Tally 3.0, the company’s latest generation of inventory management robot that now features better optical capabilities and more computing power on the edge.

Simbe’s Tally is an autonomous robot that wanders grocery store aisles to monitor product levels and detect misplaced items. By automating this task with robots, Simbe says stores get a more accurate, closer-to-real time snapshot of on-shelf inventory to make more informed stocking decisions.

Improvements to the Tally include added Intel RealSense depth and RGB cameras to help the robot “see” more products on shelves and stacked in coolers. The new camera system can read data from up to 30 inches away, which, according to the press announcement, brings the robot’s recognition accuracy to almost 99 percent without needing to slow down.

The Tally 3.0 has also pushed its computer vision and AI algorithms to the device itself. By running this additional processing on the edge, the new Tally can capture and provide data to store managers more quickly without needing to send as much information to Simbe’s cloud platform. This can be especially helpful for stores that may not have a lot of internet bandwidth at their location.

Simbe claims that its Tally detects up to 10x more out-of-stock items than manual audits, and averages a 20 percent reduction in out-of-stock items at the store level.

Brad Bogolea, Simbe Robotics Co-Founder and CEO,told me by phone earlier this month that his company saw a massive uptick in interest around August and September, spurred in part by the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent panic buying outages. As Bogolea explained to me during an interview in August, stores experienced those outages because of bad supply chain data. As we wrote then:

The bad supply chain data, according to Bogolea, is a result of the manual inventory checks that stores currently carry out. If robots are used, shelf inventory count is more accurate and up to the minute (basically) because the robots can run multiple shelf audits throughout the day. More accurate data means that stores can respond faster when there is a sudden run on particular products to speed up replenishment.

While Bogolea obviously has a horse in this particular race, we’ve definitely seen broader adoption of robots to help maintain retail inventories. Bossa Nova’s shelf-scanning robot is being deployed to 1,000 Walmart locations, and Badger Technologies’ robot is being used at Woodman’s Markets across the Midwest.

Schnucks Markets recently announced that it expanding the use of Simbe’s Tally to 62 of its locations, and Giant Eagle is trialing Tally as well. Simbe offers the Tally for a monthly subscription costing between $2,000 and $4,000 a month per store, depending on the number of stores. Though when I spoke to Bogolea this month, he said that through better sensor technology and improved manufacturing, the company is continuing to bring that cost down.

October 20, 2020

Chowbotics Adds Contactless Features and New Menu Items to Its Salad Robot

In this time of COVID, vending machines are fast becoming a great option for contactless meals. Well, mostly contactless. While the machines are using advanced robotics to make high-end food, many still require users to touch the same screen to place their order — a no-no in today’s hyper hygienic world.

When I talked with Chowbotics for The Great Vending Reinvention: The Spoon’s Smart Vending Machine Market Report earlier this year, the company knew that this limitation was an issue and was fast-tracking a solution, which is finally here.

Yesterday, Chowbotics announced some new features for its fresh food robot, Sally. Included in the updates are contactless ordering, new menu items and dynamic video advertising, according to an email sent to The Spoon.

Sally’s new contactless ordering feature lets consumers order their meals ahead of time through a new, proprietary app. Customers place their order through the app with their nearest Sally. Upon arrival at the machine, a special QR code generate by the app is scanned and the meal is made and dispensed. (The press release did not mention any new contactless payment features.)

Chowbotics also continues to expand Sally’s menu beyond salads with new options. The company today also announced that has added new chef-designed meal items including Thai noodle salad, Poke, and even a smoked brisket bowl.

Finally, Chowbotics also added new video screen to its robot, which means that operators can insert dynamic ads depending on what they want to promote. For example, the screen could display breakfast bowls in the morning and a BBQ bowl in the evening.

Since the pandemic has forced the closure of buffet-style food options like salad bars, Chowbotics and other vending companies have reporting an uptick in interest from grocery retailers. With expanded menu options, the ability to make meals around the clock and custom upsell and marketing messages throughout the day, retailers may not want to go back to staid salad bars.

UPDATE: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the video advertising would be on the touchscreen.

October 20, 2020

YPC Raises $1.8 Million (CAD) for its Versatile Robot Cooking Kiosk

YPC Technologies announced today that it has raised $1.8 million dollars CAD (~$1.36 million USD) for its robotic cooking kiosk. The round was co-led by Hike Ventures and returning investor Real Ventures, with participation from Toyota AI Ventures, Uphill Capital, and multiple angel investors.

Like others in the food robot space, YPC is building a standalone, autonomous cooking system. But unlike PAZZI, which makes pizza, or DaVinci Kitchen, which makes pasta, or even Flippy, which works a grill or fry station, YPC aims to build a more versatile cooking robot, one that can make up to 20 different types of meals.

“Our business is unique because our system can produce a large variety of meals,” Dr. Gunnar Grass, CEO and Co-founder, YPC Technologies told me by phone this week, listing “Soups, stews, beef bourguignon, rissotto, steamed asparagus” as a sample of what the YPC robot can make.

This desire for variety was borne out of Grass’ time working in in the kitchen of a retirement home. The kitchen made one type of dish per day and Grass saw many plates come back partially eaten or completely untouched, because residents didn’t like the food or couldn’t eat it because of dietary restrictions (or because they lacked teeth).

YPC has been testing its robot out at a co-working facility in Montreal, Canada over the past year. The articulating arm grabs ingredients and does the cooking and can make anywhere from half a dozen to 20 different types of meals, depending on how it’s stocked. The current version of the robot can make 30 meals in an hour, though Grass said the next version will be able to make 100 meals per hour.

Grass said that the company is targeting business customers such as retirement centers, hospitals and commercial high-rises for installations of its robot. The system does not require additional ventilation be built, which could make the decision to install one a little easier for potential locations.

Of course, another appeal of the YPC system is that it’s a robot that can work all day and removes one human (and possible vector of viral transmission) from the meal prep equation. YPC isn’t completely human-less, since people are still required to stock and final presentations, but reducing the number of human hands preparing and touching food has becoming increasingly important during this pandemic. And this type of hygiene is top of mind for the potential customers YPC is dealing with. “Right now, everyone cares about safety,” Grass said.

As we said earlier, YPC’s robot is unique in the restaurant world. Grass said with the new funding, his company hopes to have a production pilot up and running with an unnamed “multi-national” food company by the middle of next year.

October 14, 2020

Kiwibot will Pick up and Deliver Pizza from Piestro’s Robot Vending Machine

Human-free, contactless delivery is going next-level, thanks to a new partnership announced today between Piestro and Kiwibot.

In a word, this new deal is all about robots. Piestro makes a robot-powered pizza making vending machine , and Kiwibot makes little rover-style food delivery robots. As Piestros come to market, they will feature an integrated mechanism that allows Kiwibots to pluck those pizzas from the machine and cart them directly to your door.

The program isn’t live yet, and there isn’t a specific timetable for when it will happen. Piestro just successfully closed one equity crowdfunding campaign that raised more than $1 million, and is launching a new one with the hopes of raising $5 million more.

But when Piestros do come to market, those living in a Piestro/Kiwibot market will be able to order a pizza from the comfort of your couch through an app, and the Kiwibot will retrieve it and bring it to you. The exact process/app through which you order depends on if the Piestro is one owned and operated by the company, or if it is one that’s branded and licensed by a third-party.

Given the global pandemic, the desire for contactless food delivery is accelerating technologies that power both robotic vending machines and robot delivery services. Not only can robots work around the clock, they also remove a vector of human-to-human transmission. The Piestro/Kiwibot deal takes this concept even further by having a robot interact with the machine so there is no human in the transaction.

The ability to get items from vending machines was a feature that Kiwibot added last year, though being able to hold a boxed 12-inch pizza requires more space than picking up a Snickers bar. I spoke with Massimo de Marco, Piestro CEO by phone this week, who explained that Piestro is working with Kiwibot on a new version of its robot that can carry pizzas.

As noted, there wasn’t any indication of when or where Piestros will be hitting the streets. And even though Piestro and Kiwibot are the first to announce such a daisy chain of robot delivery, you can bet that similar deals will soon follow.

October 13, 2020

SKS Exclusive: Middleby Unveils the PizzaBot 5000, Which Assembles a Pizza in Under 1 Minute

Lab2Fab, a division of Middleby Corporation, unveiled its new PizzaBot 5000 pizza-assembling machine at the Smart Kitchen Summit today.

The PizzaBot 5000 (or “PB5K” as L2F President, Shawn Lange called it during today’s presentation), is an enclosed robotic system that will spread sauce and cheese on a pizza crust, as well as slice and dispense pepperoni. From there the pizza is removed from the machine, either by a human or by another robot, and placed in an oven for cooking.

The PB5K doesn’t use cartridges for ingredients. Instead, it has big hoppers for cheese and sauce. Pepperoni is loaded as a whole stick and sliced on demand (you can set the thickness). The entire system is refrigerated to keep food safe.

As demonstrated, the PB5K works with three base ingredients (in this case, sauce, cheese and pepperoni), which it can put together in under one minute. The advantages of the PB5K, according to Lange, is that it can crank out pizzas all day, and uses sensors and some computer vision for precise ingredient dispensing, which reduces food waste and save restaurants money.

If this pitch sounds familiar, that’s because that’s also the value prop from Picnic with its pizza-assembling robot. The difference, however, is that Picnic’s system is modular and linear, so it can add as many ingredients by adding more modules. Plus, Picnic has said that its system can be used for foods other than pizza (think: burritos or Subway-style sandwiches).

While not mentioning Picnic directly, Lange did mention that instead of a linear approach to pizza assembly, Middleby has chosen the “clustered” layout for its machine (it’s contained in one cabinet). This gives the PB5K a smaller footprint, with the machine coming it at around 3 – 4 sq. meters.

The PB5K will go into beta in Q1 of next year. Lange said the price was $70,000 for a machine, though the company is exploring a robot-as-as-service model.

UPDATE: An earlier version of this post misstated that the PB5K only worked with pepperoni.

October 7, 2020

Picnic Raises $3M for its Robot-Powered Pizza Assembly

Picnic, which makes a robotic system for assembling foods like pizza, has raised $3 million in funding. Geekwire was first to report the news, writing that “Vulcan Capital, Flying Fish Partners, Creative Ventures, Arnold Venture Group, and others put more money behind Picnic.” This brings the total amount raised by Picnic to $20.7 million.

Picnic’s robot, which was a hit when it debuted at our Smart Kitchen Summit last year, is a modular system that uses computer vision and conveyors to properly dispense ingredients (like pizza toppings). Though it is best known for its ability to assemble pizzas (it can put together 300 in an hour), it has broader applications and could be used to make burritos, subway-style sandwiches and more.

The global pandemic has put a spotlight on food robotics companies like Picnic because they reduce the amount of human-to-human contact when making food, and they also help create more social distance in the kitchen. It also doesn’t hurt that robots don’t get or call-in sick, and they can work around the clock without needing a break. Robots can also work at high volumes. One of Picnic’s first customers was Centerplate Pizza at T-Mobile park in Seattle, though stadiums are pretty much shut down right now.

There are actually a number of companies in the food robot space, angling to bring their automation to restaurant kitchens. Both PAZZI and Piestro are pizza robots. Miso Robotics, just announced the commercial availability of its Flippy ROAR robot. And Blendid’s robot kiosks whip up smoothies.

If you are interested in learning more about Picnic and the future of robots in restaurants, I’ll be hosting a panel with Picnic CEO, Clayton Wood, Dischcraft Robotics CEO, Linda Poulliot, and John Ha, Bear Robotics, next week at our virtual Smart Kitchen Summit. Get your ticket today!

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