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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Robotics, AI & Data

RoboEatz Shows Off Ark 03 Autonomous Robotic Meal Making Kiosk

It’s pretty remarkable to think of how much food robots have evolved over the three years I’ve been covering them. At the start of that time period, we had Flippy the robotic arm that could grill up burgers, and even that required human help. Fast forward to 2021, and RoboEatz is showing off its fully autonomous robotic meal-preparation system that can put together 1,000 meals on its own before a human is needed to refill its ingredients.

RoboEatz Ark 03 is a 200 sq. ft. standalone kiosk featuring an articulating arm, 110 fresh ingredients (30 of which are liquids like soups and salad dressings), an induction cooker and a number of cubbies that hold orders for pickup. After an order is placed (via mobile app or tablet), the robot arm grabs ingredients, places them in the rotating induction cooker, and puts the finished meal container in a cubby. You can see it in action in this video:

RoboEatz creates both cold and hot food, can produce a meal every 30 seconds, cleans and sanitizes itself, and only needs a human for refilling any ingredients that run out. Food can also be customized to meet certain taste and dietary preferences.

You won’t be seeing RoboEatz-branded robo restaurants, as the company plans to license out its technology to third-party restaurants. As I’ve said before, this type of co-branding makes a lot of sense for food robot companies. Hungry consumers won’t know what a “RoboEatz” restaurant would serve, but they would know what to expect from a robot kiosk with “Olive Garden” branding (or whatever, I’m just naming a random.

There is more interest in food robots now, thanks to the global pandemic. A fully robotic kitchen/restaurant means a truly contactless meal creation and pickup experience.

But food robots have the potential to help with the operational costs of running a foodservice operation. There’s the aforementioned savings from not employing a human (a bigger, ethical and societal issues to be sure), but robots can also dispense ingredients with precision and consistency, reducing ingredient waste. Robots can also keep ingredients out of the open keeping them away from outside germs and preventing cross-contamination. Plus, they can run 24 hours a day without a break, eliminating any downtime.

All of the above is why we’re seeing so many fully autonomous robot restaurants coming to market right now. Karakuri, YPC and Highpper all have various versions of fully autonomous robot restaurant kiosks in the works.

All of those companies are also eyeing the same high-traffic locales when placing their robo-restaurants: hospitals, transportation hubs, schools, etc. RoboEatz says it will be opening its first location “soon” in Latvia (where the company is headquartered), with another location at an undisclosed airport opening as well as a prototype store in the U.S. later this year.

Delivers AI Robots Making Deliveries in Turkey

You know those RVs that have a map of the U.S. on their spare tire cover? The maps illustrating where those driving nomads have been? I should get a map like that, only of the countries of the world and fill it in wherever delivery robots pop up, given how quickly those li’l rover bots are proliferating around the globe.

In addition to the U.S., England, South Korea, Japan, China, Russia (and more that I’m unaware of at this time), we can add Turkey to the delivery robot list, thanks to Delivers AI.

Delivers AI - Autonomous Delivery Robot / Europe

Like Starship, Woowa Brothers and Yandex, Delivers AI also creates cooler-sized robots that autonomously wheel around sidewalks and streets to make food and grocery deliveries. Delivers AI robots travel 6 – 7 km/hour and can carry 15 kg (33 lbs.). They are equipped with camera, LiDAR and radar to detect and avoid obstacles, people and traffic. While the robots are autonomous, a human still monitors and supervises the robot while it travels.

Right now, Delivers AI robots are making commercial deliveries in Instanbul, Turkey. According to an email from Delivers AI Founder and CEO, Ali Kutay YARALI, his company will have 10 robots in Q1 of 2021, growing its fleet to 100 robots in a year and 1,000 robots in two years. The company has raised $350,000 from undisclosed investors.

Yarali said the company is focused on the European market and will be working with stakeholders there to develop a legal and technical framework for autonomous robotic deployment there.

One factor that could accelerate adoption of delivery robots in Europe is the ongoing pandemic and continued desire for more contactless experiences when it comes to how we get our food. Robots can provide more human-free interactions when for food ordering and delivery. Additionally, robots can operate for long stretches of time without needing a break.

One thing I will be needing is a bigger map.

Spoonshot Launches Free Version of its AI-Based Flavor Pairing Tool

Spoonshot, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to uncover novel flavor combinations, has launched a free version of its tool that is accessible to anyone. Spoonshot CEO and Co-Founder, Kishan Vasani spoke about the new level of service at The Spoon’s Food Tech Live event earlier this week.

Up to this point, Spoonshot’s platform has been a B2B play, meant for CPG companies and foodservice operators looking ahead to see what the next food and flavor trends might be. As we wrote last year when Spoonshot raised $11 million:

To get ahead of the curve, Spoonshot’s platform examines data from across a vast number of food-related sources including online menus, food science, CPG ingredients and online food communities. Spoonshot runs this data through its proprietary machine learning and AI algorithms to help companies identify existing and novel flavor combinations.

The key word here is “novel.” When you enter a flavor like “banana” into Spoonshot’s Ingredient Network tool, the service brings back a number of potential flavor combinations and scores them based on novelty. Combining banana + chocolate is common, but combining banana + aloveera juice is something that probably hasn’t occurred to most people and a combo that Spoonshot says will be tasty.

Armed with this novel combination, a restaurant or CPG company could go about building a new product that will appeal to consumers.

Launched at the start of the new year, Spoonshot’s new free tier of service now allows anyone to try its AI platform out (pricing starts at $99/month). Chances are good that most of us in our everyday lives don’t need enterprise-grade artificial intelligence to uncover novel flavor combinations. But aside from being a fun (and free) little distraction for everyday chefs, it could also be useful for small CPG or restaurant owners that don’t have R&D budgets to expand their offerings.

CES 2021: Samsung’s Bot Handy Helps with Dishes (and Pours You Wine)

Samsung stormed out of the CES 2021 gate today, announcing a trio of home robots aimed at helping humans around the house. Samsung announced a vacuuming robot, a care assistant robot, and a robot that we are most concerned with here — a robot that will help with dirty dishes and pour you a glass of wine.

According to the press announcement:

Samsung Bot Handy will rely on advanced AI to recognize and pick up objects of varying sizes, shapes and weights, becoming an extension of you and helping you with work around the house. Samsung Bot Handy will be able to tell the difference between the material composition of various objects, utilizing the appropriate amount of force to grab and move around household items and objects, working as your trusted partner to help with house chores like cleaning up messy rooms or sorting out the dishes after a meal.

The press release didn’t provide many more details, but CNET reports that the Handy is able to become taller or shorter, and that its gripper hands can put dishes in a dishwasher, pour a glass of wine or put flowers in a vase.

At CES last year, LG and Samsung showed off kitchen robots, which featured installed, articulating arms helping make meals. The Handy seems a bit more… practical and realistic. Rather than needing a kitchen renovation to get some robotic help, the robot scurries around on its own. Plus, the Handy seems like it could even be more useful. Cooking in the kitchen can be fun, cleaning up dirty dishes really isn’t. So yes, let’s hand that task off to a robot (they can top off my glass when they’re done).

Smile Robotics Makes an Autonomous Table Bussing Robot

Last year was a big one for restaurant server robots, those self-driving trays on wheels that shuttle food from the kitchen to your table and take your empty dishes back. Yes, the pandemic closed many restaurants in the U.S., but companies like Bear Robotics, Pudu Robotics, and Keenon Robotics all made news with their particular autonomous service bots.

All of those autonomous robots, however still require a human to manually transfer food to the table or pick up the dirty dishes and place them back on the robot. And as we live in a COVID world that values fewer human-to-human interactions, this is where Smile Robotics‘ robot could come in handy. The Japanese company has developed the ACUR-C, which can autonomously serve food and drinks or collect trays of dirty or empty dishes and carry them off.

You can check it out for yourself in this video Smile Robotics posted last year:

Autonomous Clear Up Robot (ACUR-C) [Smile Robotics]

That video only shows off the bussing aspect of the robot, and even that capability won’t set any speed records. A human would be able to clear those tables in a fraction of the time it takes the robot. But it’s a start, and as with all things robot, the technology is only going to improve.

The ACUR-C is fully self-driving robot. In other words, it doesn’t need ceiling or floor markers to “see” and navigate around a restaurant. It can carry multiple trays, and the “hands” of the robotic arm can be swapped out to either collect or serve items. We reached out to Smile Robotics to find out more and will update this post when we hear back.

It’s super easy to see the ACUR-C fitting into a restaurant like the Country Garden robot restaurant complex in Guangdong, China. That restaurant has robot servers and food descending from ceilings, but nothing (as far as we know) that will automatically bus the tables.

Smile Robotics, however, could be thinking a little closer to home. Japan has an aging population and is facing a resulting labor shortage. A robot table server + busser combo will undoubtedly find a lot of use there.

Albertsons Debuts Automated Pickup Kiosk

Grocery retailer Albertsons announced today that it is piloting a new automated kiosk for grocery pickup. The kiosk is located at one of the company’s Jewel-Osco stores in Chicago.

The new kiosk, built by Cleveron, has regular and deep-freeze temperature zones, and gives curbside pickup customers a new contactless option when getting their groceries.

Jewel-Osco customers in the service area interested in using the new kiosk select “Kiosk PickUp” when shopping online, and are then give two-hour time slots to pick up their groceries. When customers arrive, they scan a code on their phone at the kiosk and their order is robotically moved to the front of the unit for pickup.

Last year, Alberstons expanded the use of automated micro-fulfillment centers, which use robotics in the back of house to pick and pack e-commerce orders. With today’s news, Albertsons is extending its automation efforts from the store room to the curb.

Albertsons’ moves, however, are part of a larger wave of automation running through the grocery industry right now. Last year was a record year for online grocery shopping, thanks to the pandemic closing restaurants and keeping people at home. In response, grocery chains have been adding systems to make online grocery shopping and order fulfillment easier. Kroger will open its automated fulfillment centers this year, FreshDirect built out an automated fulfillment facility in D.C. using Fabric’s technology, while Walmart started testing grocery delivery via autonomous vehicles.

Albertsons first automated kiosk in Chicago is already fulfilling orders and the company says it plans to install a second unit at a San Francisco Bay Area Safeway soon.

Brightseed’s First Major Phytonutrient Discovery Finds Black Pepper May Help with Fatty Liver

Brightseed, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to uncover previously hidden phytonutrients in plants, today announced preclinical data from its first major discovery targeting liver and metabolic health.

The discovery was made with Forager, Brightseed’s AI platform that looks at plants on a molecular level to identify novel phytonutrient compounds (for example, antioxidants in blueberries). Once found, Forager then catalogs these compounds and uses that information to predict the health benefits of those compounds.

With today’s announcement, Brightseed’s Forager has identified phytonutrients that can help with fat accumulation in the pancreas and liver, a condition linked to obesity. Brightseed explained its findings in a press release, writing:

Using a computational approach with data from Brightseed’s plant compound library, Forager identified two natural compounds with promising bioactive function, N-trans caffeoyltyramine (NTC) and N-trans-feruloyltyramine (NTF). Researchers determined that these compounds acted through a novel biological mechanism governing the accumulation and clearance of liver fat. The preclinical data was presented in the fall of 2020 as a poster session at The Liver Meeting® Digital Experience hosted by American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, and published as abstract #1679 in Hepatology: Vol 72, No S1. 

The release continued:

IIn preclinical studies, NTC and NTF acted as potent HNF4a activators, promoting fat clearance from the steatotic livers of mice fed a high fat diet, by inducing lipophagy.  HNF4a is a central metabolic regulator that is impaired by elevated levels of fat in the bloodstream resulting from chronic overeating. Administered in proper doses, NTC and NTF restored proper function of this central metabolic regulator, including maintaining healthy lipid and sugar levels in the bloodstream to normalize organ function. Their activities were confirmed using a cell-based human insulin promoter activation assay. Forager found NTC and NTF in over 80 common edible plant sources. 

One of those plant sources, Brightseed Co-Founder and CEO, Jim Flatt told me by phone this week, is black pepper. Now, before you run out and grab your pepper grinder, there is still a lot of work that remains before the results of this discovery bear out.

First, the compounds still need to go through clinical trials to validate Brightseed’s initial findings. This includes not only confirming any health benefits, but also determining the doses and best methods for administering the compounds. Then the best plant source for those compounds needs to be determined as well as the best method for compound extraction. Flatt told me that if all goes well, you can expect to see some form of supplement on the market by the end of 2022.

Even though that is a ways off, part of the reason to be excited by today’s announcement is because of how little time it took Brightseed to make this particular discovery. Through its computational processes, Flatt told me his company was able to shrink what used to take years down to months. “Fifteen to 20 percent of time that is computational saves us 80 percent of the time in the lab,” Flatt said.

Brightseed has already analyzed roughly 700,000 compounds in the plant world for health properties and says it’s on track to surpass 10 million by 2025. Doing so could help unlock a number of previously unknown treatments for a number of ailments and conditions as well as general improvement to our metabolic and immuno health.

In addition to independent research such as today’s findings, Brightseed also partners with major CPG brands to help them identify new applications for their products. For instance, Danone is using Brightseed’s technology to help find new health benefits of soy.

Brightseed’s announcement today also reinforces the bigger role AI will play in our food system. AI and machine learning is being used to do everything from turning data into cheese, to solving complex issues around protein folding.

As more discoveries using AI are made, more investment will be poured into the space, which will accelerate even more discoveries.

Will 2021 Be a Big Year for Food Robots? (Yes!)

Two years ago, I predicted that 2019 would be a breakout year for food robots. Let’s just say that I was a little premature with that particular prognostication. In my defense, I did said that they wouldn’t go mainstream, but still, a miss is a miss.

The reason I am dredging up my past mis-forecast, is because I’m circling back and re-purposing that robo-prediction for 2021. And like a lousy gambler, I swear, this time it’s different.

I swear that because, well, actually the robot landscape going into 2021 is much different than it was two years ago. Before going into why, it makes sense to take a step back and define our terms here. I’m using “robots” as kind of a catch all phrase. What I’m really talking about is the broad adoption of technology to automate current manual processes when it comes to the meal journey. Processes like food assembly, preparation and delivery.

I still don’t think food robots will be mainstream in 2021, there are bigger issues around production, scaling and regulation that will prevent that, but I do think a wave of regional and national retail and restaurant brands installing new automated food services.

Because COVID

Like just about everything else on the planet, the ongoing COVID pandemic is spurring the acceleration of automation across the food landscape. I sound like a broken record at this point, but robots don’t get sick and they can reduce the amount of human-to-human interaction necessary when getting food. Robots and automation can also help create social distancing for the humans are still working in restaurants and and kitchens.

Food Prep Robots

As noted above, White Castle announced a pilot with Flippy as a robotic fry cook this past summer. That pilot quickly expanded to a larger rollout of Flippy working 11 locations in the Chicago area. In addition to creating a more contactless experience, White Castle, which is open 24 hours, noted that Flippy helped with labor issues. Trying to schedule people for late night shifts is hard, so having a robot running the fry stations all day (and night) is helpful.

As restaurants work to recover from this devastating year, they will need to keep a close eye on labor and operating costs. Robots, like the pizza assemblers of Picnic and Middleby, can help with that by consistently applying the same amount of ingredients every time, thereby reducing waste. Plus, those machines can crank out tons of pizza per hour making them efficiently productive.

White Castle wasn’t the only major restaurant chain getting in on robotics. KFC in Korea announced a partnership with Hyundai Robotics this fall to develop of fried chicken making robot. And Costa Coffe, a division of Coca-Cola, acquired robot barista company, Briggo, to create Costa Coffee-branded automated coffee houses.

Then, of course, there is Spyce Kitchen launched version 2.0 of its robot-driven restaurant this year. The new concept is centered around its automated Infinite Kitchen, which allows for greater customization and personalization with orders. Spyce Kitchen doesn’t have any indoor seating, and is only doing delivery and pickup.

Food retailers are also getting in on the robot action. With the pandemic shutting down big, buffet-style salad and hot bars, some have turned to robotic vending machines like Chowbotics’ Sally. Coborn’s Market, for example, recently installed a Sally to serve up salads to its customers. And you might be seeing Chowbotics’s robots in more aisles of the grocery store. Earlier this year, Chowbotics CEO, Rick Wilmer outlined a vision where his robots are automating the free sample sections of supermarkets.

We are also reaching a point where smart vending machines are no longer stationary. Yo-Kai Express said it will be launching an autonomous mobile version of its hot ramen vending machine around the end of Q1 on two college campuses next year. This self-driving vending machine will come to you and make you a bowl of hot ramen on the spot.

Server Bots

Along with making food in restaurant kitchens, expect to see more robots rolling food out to tables (you know, when it’s safe to eat inside restaurants again). These autonomous carts on wheels can navigate to tables and around people to shuttle food and empty dishes to and from the back of house.

Both Pudu Robotics and Bear Robotics launched new versions of their server robots this year. LG is working with Woowa Brothers in Korea to develop their own robot waiter. And as of May this year, Keenon Robotics said it had 6,000 of its server robots already working in hotel and restaurant industry locations around the world.

Driving this push into robot servers is, again, COVID. Robots can work all day without getting sick, reduce human-to-human interaction, and could help with staffing issues for restaurants forced to cap indoor dining.

If you want a glimpse at the future restaurant robots, check out the video from this restaurant in Guangdong, China. There, robots take your orders, cook your meals and then drop your food on a tethered tray from the ceiling.

Delivery

But robots won’t just be dropping off food to your table, they will be driving right up to your door. Delivery bots proliferated around the country and the world throughout this past year.

There were also regulatory hurdles crossed this year, that will help open up more roads to autonomous vehicle delivery. Nuro was on a tear this year getting its self-driving R2 pod vehicle cleared by the U.S. Federal government to run on public roads, the OK from California’s government to run on public roads, and then just last week, approval from the State of California to launch a commercial autonomous vehicle service there.

To be sure, there are still plenty of city and state regulations that need to be worked out before fleets of robots will be scurrying around your town, but these were all positive steps in the right direction.

Tying it all together

Everything I mentioned above is great, and shows you how 2020 was a foundational year for robots that can be built upon in 2021.

But for me, the most exciting development for food robotics that happened this year and will pave the way for further innovation next year is the integration of robotics into other automated infrastructure.

In Seoul, Woowa Brothers partnered with networking platform developer HDC I-Controls and Hyundai Elevator to allow Woowa’s delivery robots to not just drive up to the front door of an apartment building, but also gain entrance to a secure building and autonomously ride the elevator. This will help a delivery robot get to a specific apartment inside a building.

In another example, Piestro will outfit some of its robotic pizza vending machines so that a Kiwibot delivery robot can autonomously pick up a pie and deliver it to a customer at home or at work or wherever.

In other words, delivery robots won’t just operate in silos, they will be connected to and woven into the larger fabric of our lives.

It’s not hard to see a human placing an order for a meal at their favorite restaurant via a mobile app. That order is cooked by a robotic chef, which hands it off to a prepping robot that plates and packages the meal before handing it to a server robot that runs it out to the sidewalk and deposits the food in a delivery robot who then drives it to the customer.

But we’re not done! Ideally that meal is packaged in a reusable container which a different robot picks up and takes to a cleaning facility like Dishcraft’s, where a robotic dishwasher cleans and sterilizes the containers to be used again.

OK. That vision is still a ways away and definitely won’t happen in 2021. But maybe it’ll make my prediction list for 2023? Stay tuned.

Oh! And mark your calendars for April 20, 2021 when we’ll be hosting our second Articulate Food Robotics Summit (virtally, of course). Reserve your spot today!

Pudu Server Robots Find Work in Grocery Aisles

Up to this point, when we’ve covered floor robots in grocery stores, the news has usually been about autonomous shelf scanners and floor cleaners. But as a recently released video from Pudu Robotics shows, we could soon be seeing robots that act as mobile advertising and promotional displays roaming around grocery aisles.

Amy Zhou, a Business Development Manager at Pudu Robotics, posted a video on Linkedin this week showing her company’s robots being put to work in various grocery stores around the world. The work shown in the video isn’t terribly exciting, as its mainly a lone robot carrying racks of food items that are on sale. But the move is another example of the mobile commerce trend that I predicted will have a breakout year in 2021.

Pudu’s move into grocery is reminiscent of Cheetah Mobile’s FANBOT, though FANBOT is a little more complex. Where Pudu’s robot just roams around carrying items that you then must purchase at the stores checkout, the FANBOT actually carries an inventory of different items and carries out the transaction to purchase them on the spot.

The idea is bringing commerce to where you are, rather than having you seek it out.

Pudu’s type of robotic mobile advertising could be appealing to grocery retailers. Having a mobile robot or two would give retailers another vehicle (literally) on which they could charge for placement/advertising. As a bonus, multiple, different promotions could be run in a single day. Heck, you could combine the dynamism of a Cooler Screen LED panel with the Pudu robot and have a big, bright, shiny commercial going up and down the aisles.

These types of promo robots might also find more acceptance within grocery stores themselves. Walmart ended its use of Bossa Nova’s shelf-scanning robots this year reportedly in part over concerns with how customers were reacting to the robots. There’s a difference between seeing a six-foot tall robot scanning a shelf and spotting a tray of chocolate bars headed in your direction.

Additionally, these type of self-wandering promo robots wouldn’t be taking a current job (like inventory management) away from a human, but rather adding a new one.

Plus — and this could be the biggest reason we’ll see more of Pudu’s robots in stores — at least one model is has cat-like features and makes a cute face when you pet it.

New FAA Rules Bring Burritos by Drone One Step Closer

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced its final rules around the safety of drone flying yesterday (hat tip to GeekWire). The new rules outline requirements around Remote Identification (ID) of drones, as well as spell out rules for flying drones over people and at night. The FAA’s new rules will help bring regulatory clarity to the developing drone delivery industry.

The Remote ID rule is pretty much what it sounds like, requiring drone manufacturers to include technology that “provides identification of drones in flight as well as the location of their control stations.” The rule is meant to identify specific manufacturers should something go wrong with a drone during its flight. This information will be made available to security and law enforcement agencies. Drones without Remote ID functionality will only be allowed to fly in certain areas designated by the FAA.

The second rule released yesterday was the Operations Over People and at Night rule, which covers pretty much what you’d expect. For flights over people and moving vehicles, it outlines the different categories of aircraft and the required safety precautions. Here’s an example from the FAA’s Executive Summary of the new rules:

Category 2 eligible small unmanned aircraft must not cause injury to a human being that is equivalent to or greater than the severity of injury caused by a transfer of 11 foot-pounds of kinetic energy upon impact from a rigid object, does not contain any exposed rotating parts that could lacerate human skin upon impact with a human being, and does not contain any safety defects.

Unsettlingly, the phrase “lacerate human skin” is actually used quite a bit throughout the rules summary.

In its press release, the FAA didn’t specifically mention food delivery instead issuing the following statement:

“The new rules make way for the further integration of drones into our airspace by addressing safety and security concerns,” said FAA Administrator Steve Dickson. “They get us closer to the day when we will more routinely see drone operations such as the delivery of packages.”

The FAA’s new rules will certainly help the nascent food delivery sector as it starts to grow. We’ve already seen drone food delivery pop up in small use cases around the U.S. throughout 2020. Walmart partnered with Flytrex for a pilot in North Carolina. Flytrex has also been doing drone delivery tests in North Dakota and North Carolina. And Rouses Market partnered with Deuce Drone to make grocery deliveries in Mobile, Alabama. And there are more on the horizon with big companies like Amazon and Google having their own drones delivery initiatives as well.

But getting past the onesie/twosie patchwork of pilot programs requires clarity of regulations from the FAA so delivery companies and drone startups know exactly how to proceed on a national level. There’s still a ways to go before we’re getting our burritos flown directly to our doorstep, but the new FAA rules will help drones take off.

Video: Food Descends from the Ceiling in This Chinese Robot Restaurant

In June of this year, we wrote about a robot-run restaurant opening up in the Guangdong province of China. The Qianxi Robot Catering Group, a subsidiary of Country Garden, opened a restaurant complex featuring different robots that cooked and carried food.

One thing we didn’t know at the time was that meals would be dropped from the ceiling. At least, that appears to be what happens inside the restaurant based on a video we came across.

I should insert a few caveats here about this story. There is still a lot we don’t know yet about the video below, but it looks legit and is pretty remarkable, so we wanted to share it.

Yesterday Anthony James, CEO of Innovation and Growth at Trinity Consulting, posted a video on Linkedin showing how food travels around the inside of a robot restaurant in Guangdong, China. We don’t know who shot the video, and the restaurant in the video goes unnamed, but from the bright pink decor and pink robots, it appears to be the same restaurant we wrote about back in June.

The main reason we wanted to post this is because of the rail system that delivers orders. According to a follow up comment from James, guests place an order with one of the bright pink server robots that wheel about on the floor. The cooking robot prepares the meal, which then gets plated and sent out on a modified tray via an overhead rail system. When the meal reaches the ordering table, a tethered tray drops from the ceiling to just above the table where the customer takes the plate of food off the tray. The tray and tether then retract back up to the ceiling to go make another delivery.

You can watch the whole process here:

Interest around food robots and automation has accelerated this past year, thanks to the pandemic. Robots don’t get sick, and they also reduce the amount of human-to-human interaction involved in getting a meal from the kitchen to the customer. But robots are also fast workhorses that can operate around the clock. Country Garden’s robot restaurant in Guangdong can serve up a meal in as little as 20 seconds.

The bigger question for establishments such as this, however, is how much of an investment to make in dining room technologies. Here in the U.S., foot traffic into major QSR dining rooms is half of what it was at the beginning of the year. Would that investment be better spent automating drive-thrus and other forms of food to go? Perhaps the Chinese market will rebound differently.

If you’re a Spoon reader in Guangdong, China, do us a solid and visit the restaurant. Then leave us a comment and tell us what it’s like.

Nuro Gets Regulatory Approval for Self-Driving Delivery in California

Autonomous food delivery revved a few miles forward today. Nuro, a company that makes self-driving vehicles for delivery, announced it is receiving the first-ever Autonomous Vehicle Deployment Permit from the California DMV. According to an email sent to The Spoon, this gives Nuro permission to launch a commercial autonomous vehicle service in California (which would be the first in the state). 

In layman’s terms, that means Nuro can now delivery groceries, household items, and other goods to customers’ doorsteps via its own self-driving vehicles. 

These pod-like vessels are roughly half the size of a regular car and completely autonomous. There isn’t even room for a human drive to sit in the vehicle, which travels at a max of 25 miles per hour. 

The news follows Nuro’s $500 million fundraise from earlier this month, as well as the testing permit Nuro received in April to operate on public roads in California.

Regulatory approval, or lack thereof, is one of the major factors inhibiting widespread adoption of self-driving vehicles for food and grocery delivery. State and local governments have to ensure public safety on roads, sidewalks, bridges, and other throughways before they can allow fleets of unmanned vehicles to be unleashed in cities and towns. That explains why some companies, including Starship and Kiwi, started on college campuses.

But Starship and Kiwi rover bots that are considerably smaller than Nuro’s R2 vehicle, which wouldn’t in all likelihood easily drive through the camps quad. The Autonomous Vehicle Deployment Permit means Nuro won’t have to resort to such locations in order to make its delivery services available to U.S. residents. 

Nuro said in today’s email that it will start delivery service with existing partners in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties in the new year. Service will begin with the company’s autonomous Prius vehicles and eventually transition to the company’s “full fleet” of both Priuses and R2s. 

Also this week, Nuro acquired autonomous trucking company Ike. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.