Miso Robotics, the company behind Flippy, the hamburger flipping robot, announced today that it has raised a $10 million Series B round, led by Acacia Research. In a press release, Miso said it will use the new funding to expand its suite of kitchen robots and broaden the applications for its Miso AI machine learning platform.
Flippy is a big robotic arm that uses a combination of artificial intelligence, cameras, thermal scanners and lasers to cook hamburgers. Flippy will debut at the Pasadena location of CaliBurger this year, and will roll out to more than 50 CaliBurger locations worldwide by the end of 2019.
Participating in this funding round was Levy, a Chicago hospitality company that includes restaurants as well as sports and entertainment venues and convention centers. Given the high volume of food served at these types of locations, implementing robots makes a lot of sense.
Businesses such as CaliBurger like using robots for manual, repetitive tasks since they can work all day without breaks, and be more consistent with their work than a human. In the front of the store, CaliBurger has also started using automated self-ordering kiosks equipped with computer vision to let customers pay with their face.
Robots are popping up in other settings where convenience is king and robots can automate repetitive tasks. Cafe-X in San Francisco features a robot barista that brews up coffee for customers.
Today’s announcement brings the total amount of funding raised by Miso to $13.1 million.
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