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Robotics, AI & Data

March 8, 2022

Meet Don Roverto, X’s Robotic Rover on the Hunt for The Next Magic Bean to Feed a Hungry Planet

When you spend thirty years looking for a magic bean, you’re open to a helping hand when trying to find the next one. For the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, that help has arrived in the form of a crop-roving robot nicknamed Don Roverto.

The farmbot is part of Project Mineral, an endeavor from X – Google’s famous R&D subsidiary that researches challenging problems and searches for moonshots – to scale sustainable agriculture. In a blog post published today, project head Elliott Grant describes how Mineral has been assisting the Alliance for Biodiversity and CIAT to accelerate their work to understand and uncover hidden crop traits within the world’s largest bean collection.

From the post:

The Alliance’s team has been using Mineral’s technologies at their newly opened Future Seeds genebank in Colombia, which contains over 36,000 varieties of beans. The hope is that what the Alliance discovers with Mineral’s tools can be used to grow better beans for the world, faster.

According to Andy Jarvis, the Associate Director-General with the Alliance, the organization has spent decades building and analyzing its bean collection. Finally, after thirty years of searching, they found a “magic” bean with intrinsic drought-resistant characteristics. With tools like Don Roverto, the organization can process its discoveries at lightning speed and find the next game-changing bean faster than ever before.

Don Roverto’s machine vision scanning crop traits

The rover is currently roving around the test field outside of the Alliance’s Future Seeds facility in Columbia to capture imagery of bean plants. It uses machine learning to identify characteristics such as leaf count, leaf area, leaf color, flower count, plant count and pod dimensions. Don Roverto does this for every plant in the field, so it can report how the plant has changed when it comes back the next week.

Alliance researchers say the rover is already enabling them to measure crop traits with far greater speed, frequency, and accuracy than has been possible before. For example, they can now see how a bean plant is flowering — which can help them better understand how it will cope and continue to reproduce in response to different environmental stressors, like hotter temperatures and droughts. Previously, it was nearly impossible for researchers to track this because the different components of flowering are so subtle. Now researchers can capture flowering, as it’s happening.

X’s Mineral team is continuing their work with the Alliance to better understand and map the various crops across the organization’s seed banks, but is also looking to expand their efforts with others who are interested.

You can learn more about the Mineral project and see Don Roverto roving and scanning in the video below.

Uncovering the hidden magic of beans with X's Project Mineral

March 7, 2022

Foodservice Distributor Gordon Trials Dexai’s Bowl-Food Making Robot

Gordon, one of the largest regional foodservice distributors in the US, is trialing a bowl-food robot from Dexai Robotics.

Dexai (a Smart Kitchen Summit finalist in 2018), makes an articulating-arm robot named Alfred. According to the post, the company installed an Alfred bowl-making salad station at Gordon’s test kitchen in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

You can see the Alfred in action below:

“We help operators with efficiency,” said Dexai CEO Dave Johnson. “They can load up a table with ingredients and let the robot assemble 100 grab-and-go chicken Caesar salads. You no longer need to have a body to do that, the machine doesn’t take breaks or call in sick. … It really goes to labor savings.”

While the partnership involves a single test location today, it’s easy to see how it could blossom into a bigger collaboration for Dexai. Gordon could deploy the bowl-food robot in a managed cafeteria or in one of its nearly 200 stores it operates in the US and Canada.

For Dexai, the news comes on the heels of the Massachusetts-based startup’s deployment of Alfred to 10 military bases across the US. According to Johnson, the company plans to continue developing new robots to handle tasks such as plating food and serving drinks, which could expand the locations the robot finds itself in the future.

March 6, 2022

The Food Robot Roundup: Alfred Joins the Military, Wings Hits Milestone

While much has been made about White Castle rolling out the Flippy 2 fry station robot to 100 more of its 350 locations, we thought we’d take this chance to showcase some smaller news stories from the food robot universe in this week’s food robot roundup.

Robot Chefs Enlist in The Military

We’ve seen food robots in restaurants, hospitals, universities, and malls, but placing them on military bases is new. The U.S. Department of Defense is deploying Dexai Robotics’ automated sous chefs to ten military U.S. military bases. The robotic arms use AI and computer vision to interact with their surroundings and use standard kitchen utensils to prepare various meals. The ten robots will cost the department $1.6 million to reduce food waste, improve sanitation, and keep facilities adequately staffed. The first one was deployed at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield California at the end of last year in a dining facility that serves around 950 people a day. 

For Dexai, the news is just another sign of the company’s momentum. The Boston-based startup also recently made news through a new trial of its robotic system with Gordon, one of the biggest foodservice companies in the country. The two companies are trialing Alfred, the salad-assembly robot at Gordon’s developmental test kitchen in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Wing’s Flock Grows

Drone service Wing announced this week that it had completed 200,000 commercial deliveries, with a significant amount of them in its primary market of Australia. It makes more than 1,000 deliveries a day and has Australia’sring with Coles, one of Australia’s leading supermarket chains. 

The partnership will involve Wing making deliveries in Canberra, Australia’s capital, and sparks debate of the efficacy and viability of drone deliveries in rural vs. urban areas. In some cases, such as when Australian-based drone company Swoop Aero has delivered Pfizer vaccines to Malawi, drones have been used to deliver critical supplies (like medicine) to hard-to-reach areas. Vaccines require ultra-cold chain conditions, and the Swoop Aero drones can bypass global supply chain bottlenecks to distribute vaccines in remote communities. In the case of a city-based delivery like with Wing, drone delivery can reduce traffic congestion, accidents, and greenhouse gas emissions. 

In general, last-mile delivery has been rapidly growing and this week multicultural grocery delivery service Weee! announced $425 million in funding. We also covered Kiwibot’s $7.5M pre-series A funding a few weeks ago and the global last mile delivery market size is projected to be $128.54 billion USD this year. 

The Turnkey Robotic Restaurant

You’ve heard of software-as-a-service and even robots-as-a-service, but have you heard of restaurants-as-a-service? This week Nala Robotics debuted Nala Marketplace, a network of customizable robotic chefs that can prepare recipes from various cuisines and enable restaurateurs to launch a new digital restaurant in a day. The marketplace goes hand-in-hand with the robot kitchens Nala produces, which involve a system of multiple robots using articulating arms, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to prepare, cook, and serve food. 

Restaurant chefs and owners will be able to upload recipes and menu items to the secure database and create a virtual storefront. From there, customers will be able to access these menu items and place orders sent directly to the chefs in the robot kitchen. It all sounds very futuristic, but the first Nala Marketplace location opened last month in Naperville, Illinois, where several other restaurants by Nala Robotics are operating. 

According to Ajay Sunkara, cofounder and CEO of Nala Robotics, Nala Marketplace reduces labor expenses by 60 percent, and restaurants can be set up in less than 24 hours. This has significant benefits for restaurant owners since upfront costs and labor costs can make it difficult to start a restaurant. Additionally, the flexibility of the robots to make food from many cuisines expands the options beyond the capabilities of human chefs and could also enable restaurateurs to start ghost kitchens.

Meet Dashbotics

After acquiring robotic bowl food vending machine startup Chowbotics last year, it seems that they’re expanding their food robot plans internally as well. Doordash filed trademark applications in December and early February for the names Dashbotics, Tex-Mess, and Queso Your Way. The first could indicate a plan to integrate Chowbotics into Doordash and position the platform as a white-label offering for other restaurants to launch their own consumer-facing kiosks, or it could be a sign of Doordash looking to leverage their own brand for the robotic kiosks.

March 2, 2022

Are We Ready for Humanoid Robots Like Ameca to Take Our Food Order?

If you watched the news coming out of CES, you probably saw a robot named Ameca talking to attendees on the trade show floor.

The robot, whose human(ish) eyes and facial expressions had Elon Musk freaked out when it showed up on Twitter last December, went viral during CES in January as press and attendees tweeted out videos of the humanoid interacting with attendees.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Michael Wolf (@michaelawolf)

Ever since CES, I haven’t been able to shake the image of Ameca and wonder when we might see a robot like her at my corner restaurant. And, once humanoid robots start to show up in our restaurants, I can’t help but wonder how exactly consumers will feel about it? After all, it’s one thing to show off futuristic technology at a geek-filled conference like CES. It’s another to see it in your local restaurant.

Why wonder, you ask? After all, aren’t today’s front-of-house robots more R2D2 than C3PO, and didn’t a spokesperson for the company behind Ameca say it’s probably a decade before a robot like her is walking on the streets amongst us.

Because it’s only a matter of time. My guess is we’ll start to see humanoids like Ameca in customer service roles within five years, first in scenarios where interactions are limited to a focused topic (like ordering food) and the robot is either immobile (standing behind a register) or where mobility is limited to a small spacial terrain.

So if I am right and that’s the case, it’s worth asking: will consumers embrace or run away from humanoid robots working at their local restaurant?

Industry research would suggest it depends. In a research paper published in 2018 entitled “Human Or Robot? the Uncanny Valley in Consumer Robots”, researchers describe a test in which they showed participants images of three different customer service workers – a highly but imperfectly human-like robot, a human, and a human posing as a perfectly human-like robot – and told them a chain of stores is considering employing them.

The results showed people felt most comfortable with humans and least comfortable with almost-human robots. Interestingly, while respondents weren’t as comfortable with the perfectly human-like robot as they were humans, they did feel slightly more comfortable with perfectly human-like robots than ones that were slightly off. This suggested to the researchers that once consumers can no longer discern small differences that make a humanoid seem slightly uncanny, they become more comfortable.

The receptivity of humanoids might also depend on where people live. The same researchers conducted a test in the US and Japan where they showed survey respondents pictures of robots with moderate or high human likeness and also photos of humans. Japanese respondents tended to see the robots as significantly less uncanny than Americans and were more likely to see the robots as having more “human nature.”

Researchers theorized these differences in reactions between Japanese and US respondents might be cultural. They suggest that in countries like Japan where religions like Confucianism and Shinto teach that spirits live in both animate and inanimate objects, consumers may be more likely to grant human nature onto robots. They contrast this with the US, where Christianity, a religion that believes only humans have souls, is dominant.

While consumer perceptions tied to religious or local value systems are important, it’s also worth recognizing that collective perceptions in society do change over time. As robotics become more commonplace, everyday consumers may just become less freaked out about them. Today’s novelty could become tomorrow’s everyday reality, if you will.

And while only time will tell, my guess is operators might opt to be more conservative, at least in the near term, when deploying humanoid robots. After all, if almost-human robots freak out consumers, restaurant owners might be safer installing something closer to Chuck E. Cheese than some real-world version of the kid from Polar Express.

February 21, 2022

Food Robot Roundup: Delivery Bots Explore New Areas, Yum China’s Robot-Powered Expansion

It’s been a busy few weeks for restaurant robots. In this edition of the food robot roundup, we’ve got updates on the expanding map for a couple of food delivery bots, Jamba & Blendid’s growing relationship, Yum China’s increasing reliance on robots, and more.

Let’s get to it.

Coco delivery bot expands beyond California

Coco has spread its wings. The food delivery robot startup has expanded to Austin, Texas, the first city outside of its home state of California. This expansion is thanks in part to the Series A funding round of $36 million that it raised last August. Coco launches with ten partners in Austin, including Arpeggio Grill, Bamboo Bistro, Clay Pit, DeSano Pizzeria, Tuk Tuk Thai, and Aviator Pizza.

Coco makes a four-wheeled, cooler-sized robot that delivers food and beverages. Coco prepositions its robot at merchant locations in dense city environments and advertises that it completes deliveries in 30 minutes or less. The company has indicated Austin is only its first stop in Texas as it has plans to expand to other cities in the Lonestar state.

Kiwibot, another robot delivery service, announced that they’ve raised $7.5M pre-series A funding and closed an expansion deal with Sodexo, a food services and facilities management company. They currently have 200 robots operating in 10 campuses and are on track to expand to 1200 robots and 50 locations by the end of 2022. 

Kiwibot, which was founded at the University of California, Berkeley, has long-targeted college campuses, ideal locations for food delivery robots with their dense populations of hungry college students, and protected pedestrian walkways. Besides the slew of robots making deliveries on campuses, consumer-facing food kiosks (more on that later) and autonomous retail shopping have also been moving in.

Jamba and Blendid expand to two more campuses

Jamba and Blendid have expanded their reach to two more college campuses, Georgia College and Kennesaw State University. The co-branded Jamba by Blendid smoothie kiosks offer a quick and convenient way to pick up a healthy smoothie and will be located in each school’s student union. 

University campuses are a great way for Jamba by Blendid to tap into a market that is open to using technology and usually doesn’t have easy access to healthy food like smoothies. Blendid has plans to expand its kiosks into other locations such as gyms, hospitals, and airports, which means the company will need to adapt to different customer buying behavior and preferences. At universities, Blendid offers flavors of the week or theme-based drinks to keep students engaged and coming back. 

Hyphen Raises $24 Million Series A

Hyphen, a startup that automates the back-of-house food assembly for restaurants, just announced a $24m Series A funding round led by Tiger Global.

The company’s flagship product is the Makeline, a modular robotic food assembly line. Workers focus on taking the orders and the machine combines ingredients and can generate 350+ meals per hour. KitchenOS, the software powering the Makeline, utilizes data from the robotic assembly line and other inputs to optimize workflows, recipe development, and food scheduling. 

Hyphen’s modular system means that restaurants can add or take away modules and choose ones that precisely fit their needs, such as dispensing, reheating, and mixing. According to company CEO Stephen Klein, the company currently has 11 customers who have pre-ordered the Makeline.

You can catch the Spoon’s interview with Hyphen’s CEO and co-founder Stephen Klein here. 

Yum China expands stores without workers

Image credit: Associated Press

Yum China, a Chinese restaurant group that spun off from U.S. parent Yum Brands in 2016, has expanded its number of stores while keeping its labor force the same, in part by increased use of AI and robotics. The group operates restaurants such as KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell and has increased the number of stores by 56% from 7,652 in 2016 to 11,788 in 2021. However, the company has kept the same number of employees during the same period at 420,000 full and part-time staff. 

Yum China has managed this by leveraging a variety of restaurant technology. The company has installed touch screen panels to automate the ordering process and has installed robots in its KFC to serve soft-serve ice cream in several Chinese cities. Yum has installed digital lockers store takeout orders in other locations.

Yum China’s increased reliance on automation is just one sign of the rapid adoption of restaurant technology adoption in the Chinese fast food sector. Other examples include this restaurant in Foshan, a city in Guangdong’s southern province, where a robot prepares and serves fast food dishes. Robotic arms prepare the food and then robot waiters and a conveyor-belt system deliver the food.

In case you missed it, I discussed cultural differences in openness to technology adoption in the last roundup, where I discussed the robots serving food to Olympians in Beijing. It’ll be interesting to see if the high profile of robots at the Olympics will lead to more acceptance of food robots in the United States or more hesitation.

February 18, 2022

Hyphen Wants to Be The Shopify for Restaurant Robots

Imagine you’re a culinary student with dreams of owning your own restaurant.

In days past, that journey towards restauranteur would take 10 to 20 years as you cut your teeth, gained experience, and saved enough money.

But imagine if you could build a restaurant today or in the near future leveraging automation and software? There would be no big location remodel and a big loan to pay for it. Instead, you’d use a virtual restaurant model powered by fractional pay-as-you-go food robotics, food ordering apps, and third-party delivery, all allowing you to bring something to market in months instead of a decade?

That’s the kind of world that Stephen Klein wants to build. Klein’s company Hyphen announced this week that they’d raised a $24 million Series A funding round, and so I decided to catch up with him to hear about his vision for the company and the food robotics marketplace.

In short, what Stephen and his co-founder Daniel Fukuba believe they are building a Shopify for restaurant robots.

“Instead of enabling merchants to compete with the likes of Amazon, we’re enabling restaurants to compete with the likes of DoorDash,” said Klein.

According to Klein, the big delivery companies are sucking up data from smaller restaurants and using that to compete with them. He believes if the smaller and regional players – as well as new food entrepreneurs – were able to use Hyphen’s automation technology to scale up new offerings, they’d have a much better chance to compete with the big players.

“We’re basically removing the overhead of starting and scaling a restaurant,” said Klein. “You can kind of just do it from your home effectively. And that’s just a really cool place in our mind.”

That’s the vision, but the company first has to scale its own business to get there. From the looks of it, they’re off to a good start as the company has already taken preorders from 11 customers, a list which includes restaurants, ghost kitchen operators, food service companies, and copackers. The company plans to use its new funding to build its manufacturing factory, develop new capabilities, and deploy to customers.

And once they do hit scale, Klein believes Hyphen can help create that democratized food creator future by renting out food production capacity on their Makeline to aspiring food operators. He pictures everyone from culinary creators operating from their dorm to food influencers on TikTok and Instagram building a restaurant brand or multiple brands.

“You could do different categories or brands of bowls or salads and eventually burritos,” said Klein. “You can run Yum brands 2.0 from one location.”

If you’d like to hear my full conversation with Klein about his vision for the future of restaurants and food robotics, click play below or find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

February 15, 2022

White Castle Rolling Out Fry Station Robots To 100 More Locations

Today White Castle announced they are rolling out the Flippy 2 fry station robot to 100 new locations.

The expansion follows a trial of the original Flippy in the Chicagoland White Castle and 10 additional White Castle locations in 2020, and an upgrade to the Flippy 2 last fall.

As we wrote last fall, the Flippy 2 represents a significant upgrade over the original across a number of functional areas. This move could be a signal Miso’s clients are ready to expand more quickly with a new model that can essentially take over the work of an entire station, is much more customizable and has a smaller overall footprint.

“We could not be more grateful for the confidence White Castle has shown in us as we enter into the next phase of our partnership,” said Mike Bell, CEO of Miso Robotics, in a release sent to The Spoon. “White Castle was the first large brand to embrace our technology and we are thrilled that our Flippy pilot made such a positive impact on their operations that they want to integrate 100 more. We can’t wait to continue on this journey with such an outstanding partner.”     

This news, alongside Pizza Hut’s recent push into containerized robotics, should put to rest any doubts as to whether fast-food chains are going to continue to adopt automation. Labor shortages, rising wages, and increased competition are all accelerating the transition of the broader quick-service market towards automation solutions.

February 9, 2022

The Food Robot News Roundup: China’s Olympic Foodbots, Nuro Gen 3

As Spoon readers know, food robots are everywhere nowadays. So to keep you current on all the goings-on in this fast-moving market, we’re launching a weekly roundup of the top stories at the intersection of food and automation. Let’s get to it.

Metal and medals

Photo: NBC Sports

This video from Reuters shows the futuristic robotics used at the Winter Olympics this year. In an effort to minimize human contact and reduce the spread of the coronavirus, China has installed robot waiters and bartenders to prepare and deliver food in the main media center. Food can be ordered by scanning a code with your phone, but perhaps the most futuristic is the tracks running along the ceiling, where orders are lifted straight from the automated kitchen and lowered to tables. 

It’s been interesting to see how the rest of the world has reacted to the robots in China. Eastern cultures tend to be more accepting of robot technology while some western media outlets have covered it with a more dystopian perspective. But having robots at the Olympics isn’t a new concept. The mascots for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were robots and the Games utilized robots in several ways to make events more efficient and safe. So as the Winter Olympics kick off, I’ll be watching the athletes compete but thinking about the robots behind the scenes that make their lives easier. 

Apples and Oranges

Wavemaker Labs acquired Abundant Robotics’ IP last year, adding to its portfolio of seed to fork robotics that also includes the likes of Miso Robotics, Future Acres, and Nommi. The company is now incorporated as Abundant Robots, Inc and is part of the Wavemaker Labs portfolio.

Now, they are seeking equity crowdfunding to raise money to leverage existing technology to build a new apple-picking robot. The goal is to use the computer vision and machine learning technology that was acquired to build a cheaper and more efficient apple-picking robot.  

Many of Wavemaker’s other portfolio companies have also used equity crowdfunding to raise capital (Piestro just launched its third campaign). Equity crowdfunding can serve as a way to give consumers a vested interest in the success of the venture and can be used as a way to market the company as well. Outside of Future Acres, most of Wavemaker’s companies have been more consumer-focused than Abundant Robots. Since Abundant Robots is a highly technical venture and consumers won’t be interacting with it directly, it’ll be interesting to see how Wavemaker applies the same funding strategy they use for consumer-facing products. 

Share the roads

Founded by two ex-Google Car/Waymo employees, Nuro announced that they have finalized the development of their third-generation driverless delivery vehicles, called “Nuro.” Nuro is 20% smaller in width than the average passenger car and designed to operate on the roads, unlike other delivery robots like Starship and Serve Robotics that operate on the sidewalks (more on those later). 

However, unlike autonomous vehicles like Waymo, Nuro doesn’t house any passengers. Instead, it contains two modular cargo compartments that hold food and can be changed between heating and cooling what’s inside. Because Nuro doesn’t hold any passengers, it’s cheaper to build and the company recently announced that they are building factories to begin production. Additionally, Nuro doesn’t have to sacrifice passenger comfort for safety and even features an external airbag to protect pedestrians and cyclists. 

While the hybrid between autonomous vehicle and delivery robot is unique, perhaps the most fascinating use case for Nuro is as a roving grocery store. A photo in the announcement video shows Nuro stocked with fresh produce. It’ll be interesting to see if this new technology is leveraged by grocery stores as they implement their dark grocery store strategies. 

Starship to the moon

Starship Technologies, the San Francisco based autonomous delivery robot company, just received €50 million from the European Investment Bank, the funding arm of the European Union. Although the company launched in 2017, demand skyrocketed (no pun intended) during the pandemic when customers were staying at home or minimizing their contact with other people. Since then, it’s made more than 2.4 million commercial deliveries and traveled over 3 million miles globally. 

In case you missed it: Food robotics coverage from the Spoon

  • Bolk, a French robotics startup that makes bowls, announced on Friday that it has raised €4 million in funding. 
  • Yo-kai’s self-driving ramen vending robot will be making an appearance at the Super Bowl pre-party in LA next week. 
  • Pizza Hut and Hyper Robotics teamed up to launch a fully automated containerized pizzeria in the parking lot of a mall in Bnei Dror, a city in central Israel. 
  • Serve Robotics recently announced that the company’s sidewalk delivery robot has reached Level 4 autonomy.

February 7, 2022

CES: Welcome to our Food Robot Future (Video)

Last month, The Spoon got on the technology industry’s biggest stage to talk about the state of food robotics with leaders building food robot companies for the restaurant, retail, agriculture and food service.

Panelists on the first-ever food robot panel at CES include Clayton Wood (Picnic), Suma Reddy (Future Acres), Andy Lin (Yokai Express), Juan Higueros (Bear Robotics) and yours truly as moderator.

During the conversation, we discussed business models, the evolution of technologies, policy and much more.

You can watch the full session entitled Welcome to our Food Robot Future below.

February 4, 2022

Meet Bolk, a Robotic Bowl Food Canteen Company That Just Raised €4M

Bolk, a maker of bowl-making robotic canteen, announced today that it has raised €4 million in new funding.

Founded in 2020, the French startup is using the capital to build prototypes which it has already started to deploy around Paris and surrounding areas.

The Bolk canteen bot, which is reminiscent of Chowbotics’ Sally robot, takes up 2 square meters of floor space and can produce up to 60 meals an hour. The Bolk is completely autonomous and can make a variety of foods, using a mix of sweet, savory, cold or hot ingredients that can make up to 300 total combinations.

The company supplies food ingredients to each robot. Ingredients are pre-cooked in local kitchens in Paris, and Bolk re-stocks each robot twice a week, on Monday and Wednesday.

The company plans to expand in 2022, looking to deploy up to 40 Bolk-bots around France. The initial rollout will be into corporate offices, but the company also has plans to explore other potential venues such as public spaces or retail environments.

The company was founded by Nicolas Jeanne, who like many in this space point to a mission of democratizing fresh food through the use of robotics.

“The catering sector is constantly evolving and we are building a new self-service food experience, offering companies and their staff a daily menu of delicious and eco-responsible meals at the best possible prices; meals that are made to order and produced in 45 seconds flat, therefore ultra-fresh,” said Jeanne.

You can get a sneak peek at the Bolk in the video below.

BOLK - pionnier de la cantine robotisée

February 2, 2022

Yo-Kai’s Self-Driving Ramen Vending Robot is Heading to the Super Bowl

Yo-Kai Express, a maker of robotic vending machines, debuted its autonomous mobile ramen vending robot this week. Named the Yatai, the robot made its appearance at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington as part of an innovation event put on by the software giant.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Yo-Kai Express Inc. (@yokaiexpress)

When the company first announced the mobile ramen-bot at The Smart Kitchen Summit Japan in December 2020, founder Andy Lin said the machine would be able to navigate specific routes and stop when hailed by a mobile phone. The company also said they were already beginning to work with a manufacturer and had started discussions with the Universities of California at Berkeley and Irvine about having the mobile ramen machine traverse their campuses.

While the final destinations for the first few Yatais have yet to be disclosed, the company knows where its next stop is for its autonomous ramen robot: The Super Bowl. According to Lin, The Yatai will make its general public debut in LA next week at the Super Bowl pre-party.

And what about the Takumi, the home ramen machine the company teased in 2020? Based on our conversations with Yo-Kai, because the company’s primary focus has been the rollout of the Yatai, they hit pause on the rollout of the Takumi. Hopefully, with the Yatai finally making it to market, we’ll see the Takumi making an appearance soon.

January 25, 2022

Pizza Hut Launches a Fully Robotic Restaurant-in-a-Box (Video)

This month, Pizza Hut debuted a fully automated robot-powered restaurant.

The ‘restaurant-in-a-box’ is based on technology from Hyper-Robotics, an Israel-based food robotics startup that makes containerized restaurants.

The restaurant is operating out of the parking lot of Drorim Mall, a shopping mall located in the central Israel city of Bnei Dror. The restaurant is fully self-contained, doing everything from dropping toppings to baking and boxing. About the only thing it doesn’t do is make the dough, but according to Hyper its pizza restaurant can hold up to 240 types of dough in different sizes.

You can see the robot in action here:

When Hyper launched its robot pizza restaurant in November, it had a capacity of 50 pies per hour. It also had 30 warming cabinets, two robotic dispensing arms and dispensers for up to 12 toppings.

The customer initiates an order for a pizza directly from a touchscreen kiosk on the restaurant exterior or through the Pizza Hut app. After the pizza is made and boxed, a Pizza Hut employee takes the pizza from a dispensing tray and hands it to the customer. In future versions, the restaurant will be able to dispense the pizza directly to the customer.

That Hyper’s biggest named customer is also the biggest name is pizza shouldn’t be a surprise, in part because its founder, Udi Shamai, is also the president of Pizza Hut Israel. Shamai is a master franchisee that oversees 90 Pizza Huts across the country.

When I wrote our food robotics predictions last week, one of the trends I predicted for food robotics was the rise of the robot restaurants-in-a-box. It looks like Hyper and Pizza Hut didn’t waste any time getting the ball rolling on this trend.

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