After a brief hiatus, Flippy, Miso Robotics’ burger-grilling robot is back online and back at work at the Pasadena Caliburger location.
Flippy famously debuted at Caliburger back in March — only to be “fired” after just one day. Earlier reporting suggested that the problem was the human staffers who couldn’t keep up with the high-tech cook. While human interaction was an issue, a story in USA Today states that there were technical problems as well, with Flippy having trouble keeping up with demand and not putting burgers in the proper trays for co-workers.
Evidently, those glitches have been addressed and Flippy has been quietly back in action since the start of this month, doing a one-hour lunch shift every day, flipping roughly 300 burgers.
Flippy is a tip of the spear of sorts, leading the way for the restaurant robot revolution. In addition to Flippy, Zume has a pizza-making robot, Cafe X has a robot barista, and Bear Robotics has Penny to shuttle food and dirty dishes back and forth. Looking ahead, Sony recently teamed up with Carnegie Mellon University to work on food robots for the future as well.
Despite its rocky start, Miso Robotics said that fifty more Flippys will be launched by 2019. Additionally, earlier this year Miso Robotics raised a $10 million Series B round, which included participation from hospitality company Levy. The two companies are working on using Flippy in commercial kitchens at large venues such as sports arenas.
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