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Robotics

January 15, 2017

Can Tech Completely Automate The Restaurant Front Of House?

While we’ve seen a bunch of news lately about how food robots and automation are gaining momentum in the restaurant world, much of the action has been around ‘back of house’ operations and delivery, where robots and automation can specialize in completing repetitive tasks like making burgers at a lower cost than humans.

But the reality is, front of house is just as susceptible to automation. One of the most obvious places for tech is at the dining table itself, where companies like Ziosk are working to make servers more efficient and, in many cases, help restaurants reduce overall server headcount. Ziosk’s touch screens, which allow consumers to order, ask for refills and pay, are on tables everywhere from Red Robin to Chili’s to Olive Garden. In fact, the company indicated that their kiosks touch 50 million consumers in 3,000 restaurants in the US.

Fast food is even more susceptible to automation. Companies like Panera, Wendy’s and McDonalds are rolling out self-order kiosks nationwide, making fast food one of the fastest growing categories in what some predict will be a $73 billion self-serve kiosk market in 2020.

And then there are those restaurants creating entirely new restaurant concepts which take the front-of-house beyond just the kiosk and make them entirely human-less.

One of these is Eatsa, a San Fransisco based chain that has created a restaurant concept where the entire order and serve flow are done with automation. And if you think Eatsa’s quinoa meals are prepackaged boxes made somewhere off-site, you’re wrong: humans work to fulfill orders, only consumers never get to see them behind the wall of futuristic cubbies where the custom-ordered meals magically appear.

You can see how it all works in the video from Techcrunch below:

Eatsa's High Tech Quinoa To-Go

But do consumers want humans eliminated entirely in the front of house? Are restaurants going to eventually all become Eatsa-like order and pickup joints with nary a worker in sight?

My guess is human-less front of house operations will eat up a small but growing percentage of the overall restaurant mix, particularly in fast-food and casual dining markets where consumers often want to eat fast and affordably. But the biggest impact will be on specific functions. Much like Amazon has re-thought the grocery store in a modern context to use technology to automate a task (checkout), we’ll see restaurant chains starting to focus on those front of house tasks that can be reduced or eliminated with tech (like ordering).

I expect automation to have a much smaller impact in fine dining’s front of house operations. That’s because consumers are willing – and often times expect – to pay more for the experience, and that experience is usually highly dependent on the service of humans.

The ultimate question is how far will automation go and what does it mean for both restaurants and consumers? On the restaurant side, it’s clear a balance must be struck between increased efficiency and creating a compelling user experience.  If consumers see added benefit through expedited ordering and payment through tech like Ziosk, then why not?

But if going to restaurants becomes the equivalent of going to food ATMs, there’s a chance eating out will lose some of its appeal. Unless of course you frequent one of these many robot-restaurants popping up in China.

Then you may want your meal served by a robot waiter.

January 12, 2017

Daimler Invests In Starship Technologies, Maker Of Sidewalk Delivery Robots

I wrote this morning that investors are beginning to look to robotics as an alternative to food delivery when it comes to food tech investment. As it turns out, some might want to invest in both at the same time.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Daimler Benz just invested $17 million in sidewalk robot delivery company Starship Technologies. Starship, which makes sidewalk robots to deliver food and groceries, was founded by two Skype cofounders in 2014.

I had a chance to talk with cofounder Ahti Heinla last fall, who told me that while everyone working on the future of home delivery is largely focused on self-driving cars and drones, they thought their approach would be easier to realize in the near term.

“Autonomous cars need to respond correctly to every possible situation that can arise on a road”, said Heinla. “With a sidewalk robot, when a robot encounters a situation that is too complicated for the automatic system to handle, the robot can simply stop on the sidewalk and call up the (human) operator to help. This is the beauty of using a robot moving at pedestrian speeds on a sidewalk.”

The $17 million investment from Daimler isn’t the carmaker’s first autonomous vehicle investment. Last year they invested in Matternet to jointly develop a van that would drive airborne drones close to the point of delivery and then let the drones deliver parcels to their final destination.

Unlike their drone effort, sidewalk robots present less regulatory hurdles. “We have a lot more operational freedom because, in a number of countries and U.S. states, we are completely legal and do not need any laws or regulations to be changed,” Heinla told the Wall Street Journal.

January 12, 2017

Is Robotics The Next Hot Sector For Food Tech Investment?

If you spend any time analyzing the food tech investment landscape, you notice something pretty quickly: the vast majority of funding goes to food delivery.

And while food delivery will continue to be the biggest slice of the investment pie for the foreseeable future, recently there’s been a noticeable uptick in non-delivery related food tech investments.

One area outside of delivery that is piquing the interest of investors is food robotics. In the last year, we’ve seen numerous investments in both professional and consumer focused food robotics.

A few examples from 2016:

Otto Robotics: The Seattle area startup recently raised $1.5 million for its food assembly robot for restaurants.  The company, which is still in stealth, raised its funding from Paul Allen’s Vulcan Ventures and Draper Associates.

Casabots: This company which makes salad assembly robot for cafeterias and restaurants picked up a $100 thousand in spring of 2016. The company is planning on producing its salad robot at scale in 2017.

Zume Pizza: This ambitious startup wants to not only make pizzas using robotics, but also puts them to use in its delivery trucks to help bring fresh pizza to your home. They raised an impressive $23 million late last year.

Drink Robots: Robotic cocktail startups Bartesian and Somabar both recently picked up funding, with Somabar receiving a $1.5 million and Bartesian getting an undisclosed amount from Beam Suntory, the spirits company behind Jim Beam whiskey brand. Early this year pro-cocktail robot company Monsieur picked up $1.2 million.

Gammachef: This Croatian maker of consumer cooking robots is still developing its first product, but Podravka, one of Croatia’s largest and oldest packaged food companies, made news in the country by making Gammachef its first startup investment.

Why all the interest in robots? In the professional markets like back of house food assembly, it’s clear that this technology could help automate repeatable, high-volume tasks such as making a pizza or preparing a hamburger. While automating (and eliminating) jobs with robotics may not be something large restaurant chains want to discuss publicly in today’s political environment, there is no doubt food is an industry that will see a large-scale injection of robotic technology over the next decade.

Consumer food robotics offer a less sure path for investors, mostly because robots excel at tasks that are high-volume and repeatable. Unless you’re planning on feeding your neighbors every day or drinking 30 cocktails after a hard day at work, chances are you don’t need a robot. Still, over time product categories like multicookers (i.e. Thermomix) will incorporate more automation and startups like Gammachef will continue to work on making food assembly in the home easier. At some point, I expect someone to create a compelling and affordable cooking robot that that captures the imagination (and dollars) of consumers.

Will food robotics ever rival delivery as an investment category? Probably not anytime soon. However, just as food delivery was seen as ripe for disruption by the investor class, I think food assembly and creation is now very much on investors’ radar and will take a bigger piece of the pie in coming years.

December 22, 2016

The Year In Food Robots

When you hear the words ‘food’ and ‘robot’ in the same sentence, chances are something like Softbank’s Pepper pops to mind, a modern Rosie-the-robot like humanoid with the hands and feet required to move around a kitchen and flip a pancake or two.

But when it comes to the kitchen, reality hasn’t quite caught up with the world envisioned by Hanna-Barbera, at least not yet. While there are companies who seem pretty serious about creating human-like creatures to take over our kitchen, the kitchen robot invasion, at least for the foreseeable future, will most likely consist of many more single-function machines that can automate tasks like drink mixing or stirring food in a pot rather than machines that act as a humanoid master chef (with one or two exceptions).

There’s also a big difference between what’s happening in the consumer kitchen compared to the pro kitchen.  While consumers will witness a slow and subtle invasion of single-purpose devices into our homes, in the pro kitchen we’re likely to see a variety of robotic systems put into use in restaurant environments over the next few years.

Below we take a look at what happened in food robots in 2016 and what to expect in 2017:

Consumer Cooking Robots in 2016: Failure To Boot

When it comes to consumer multifunction cooking robots, 2016 was mostly a non-starter. Despite showing at this year’s CES, Sereneti never shipped their product. OneCook, coming off a high-profile Kickstarter campaign in 2015 in which they raised over $100 thousand, missed its August ship date and has paused production without an update in months.

If you really want the closest thing to an all-in-one cooking robot today, your best bet is something like the Thermomix, a multi-cooker that I’ve been trying out and have discovered it does a whole lot of things and does them well. Sure, it may not have robotic arms to peel garlic or slice potatoes, but did you think you could automate everything in the kitchen?

Bartenderbots

If after a crazy year you feel you could use a drink, here’s some good news: the bartenderbots are coming.

Two startups, Bartesian and Somabar, are both in the process of bringing drink mixers to market that automate the process of making a cocktail.  Both use chambers to hold spirits, while the Bartesian uses a pod-based system to add flavors a la Keurig, while the Somabar has an infuser chamber to hold flavors that are added to the drink in the mixing process.

Both have told The Spoon they are planning to ship in first half of 2017.

Breadbots 

If drinking isn’t your thing, perhaps you’d like a breadbot.

The Rotimatic, a robot that makes roti (Indian flatbread) and wraps began shipping in August. The wrap-robot is made by Zimplistic, a Singapore based startup that first showed off the product in January 2015 at CES. The company is working towards shipping the product to the US in 2017.

Another automated breadmaker, the Flatev, launched their Kickstarter campaign for a pod-based tortilla maker in May and indicated this month they are on track for an August 2017 ship date.

Ok, So Maybe We Do Have A Chefbot: Moley

If you’ve seen a story about a full kitchen robot in 2016, chances are it was about Moley. The startup, which touts itself as makers of the first robotic kitchen, has created a prototype of robotic chef that uses two fully robotic arms to mimic the movements of BBC master chef Tim Anderson.  While Moley appears to be the kind of robot that would work well in a pro kitchen, particularly if it was surrounded by a supporting cast of sous chefs to prepare ingredients (the Moley robot only prepares the final meal, but doesn’t do prep work or cleanup), the company envisions a consumer version of the Moley robot complete with two robotic arms, a built-in oven, a cooktop and a touchscreen to control the system.

While the idea of a fully robotic cooking robot is intriguing, I have my doubts about the readiness of the concept for consumer kitchens in 2017. Partly for practical considerations, as the Moley robot will require a large footprint, will require professional installation and, at this point, only performs part of the cooking process.  My biggest concern, however, is cost: while the company has yet to release pricing, I suspect it will cost somewhere north of five thousand (maybe much more) given it has a built in cooktop, stove and, oh yeah, robotic arms. All of this built-in tech means only those willing to spends lots of money on a futuristic concept will buy a Moley, provided it works well (and that’s a big if).

Despite these concerns, I am excited for the work Moley is doing, even though I’m not convinced the consumer market is ready for the product just yet.

You can see the Moley prototype at work below:

The robotic chef - Moley Robotics

Here Come The Probots

While the consumer cooking robotics market has surprisingly bare shelves in late 2016, the pro kitchen saw significant progress in 2016. There are a number of different ‘probots’ being developed for the restaurant and professional kitchen. Below are a few of the food (p)robot innovators we watched closely in 2016:

Casabots

Casabots is a salad assembly robot company that began in 2014 after founder and CEO Deepak Sekar had experimented with creating a food robot for his home. He soon realized that a more practical application of robotics was in professional environments and, before long, Sally was born. Sally, the company’s salad-assembly robot, looks a little (or a lot) like a refrigerator and allows the user to pick their ingredients using a touchscreen. Sekar told me that they are working with corporations like Aramark that run cafeterias to have Sally installed in high-volume work environments and expects to have Sally ready for market in early 2017.

Momentum Machines

Back in 2012, a new company emerged from food tech startup incubator Lemnos Labs with the goal of not helping humans in the world of fast food, but replacing them all together.

“Our device isn’t meant to make employees more efficient,” said Momentum Machines co-founder Alexandros Vardakostas in an interview with Xconomy. “It’s meant to completely obviate them.”

A couple of years later, the company unveiled a prototype of a machine that could make up to 400 hamburgers per hour. The device, the tech details of which the company has kept largely under wraps, is described in the diagram below:

momentummachines-0

What’s fascinating about Momentum Machines technology is that while it works at industrial speed, it’s not mass producing the same burger over and over. It’s creating up to 400 custom burgers per hour. That’s right: up to 400 uniquely crafted, cooked, assembled and bagged hamburgers per hour.

And now, after going silent since 2014, the company created a buzz in June when it was discovered they’d applied for a building permit to create its first restaurant in San Francisco. While the roboburger joint has yet to open, we’re excited to head there in 2017 to try out a fully robot-produced hamburger.

Zume Pizza

The craziest – and perhaps most brilliant  – of all the pro food robots is from Zume Pizza. Founded by former Zynga President Alex Garden, Zume utilizes robotics in two points in the process (production and distribution) to get fresh machine-assisted artisan-style pizzas to consumers.

The pizza production process utilizes three robots and a conveyor belt system to produce pizzas at a fast rate for consumption in-restaurant or delivered to the home. The process includes three robots for production (Pepe for sauce dispensing, Marta for sauce spreading, and Bruno for loading and unloading pizza into the oven).  Humans work side-by-side in the Zume pizza kitchen, adding ingredients to the pizza, correcting any errors by the robots.

If you think the robot’s job done at Zume once it comes out of the kitchen, you’d be wrong. The company is working on creating large pizza trucks that utilize what it calls “Baking on the way” technology, a patented system that employs 56 individual ovens that are wired to initiate a cook just minutes before the arrival at the consumer’s door to give them an “out of the oven” experience.

The company, which opened its first restaurant this year, has applied for permits to operate its mobile pizza ovens on wheels and just this month raised close to $23 million in equity financing, so there’s a good chance we’ll see more restaurants – and possibly some pizza ovens on wheels – from Zume in 2017.

Starship 

While Starship isn’t really a food robot, there’s a good chance it’s robots – or ones like it – will help bring food to us in the future. That’s because Starship, a company cofounded by Skype cofounder Ahti Heinla, makes sidewalk delivery robots that are already being put into trials by large grocery stores to deliver food to consumers.

When I spoke to Heinla earlier this year, he made it clear he thought robotic delivery had huge advantages over the traditional method of humans and cars.

“With robots,” he said, ”the cost is in technology, manufacturing, and maintenance. The safest bet you can do is that technology is getting cheaper all the time. It’s just a question of time before this (delivery) will be one dollar, fifty cents.”

What’s interesting is Starship robots still require humans to control them – much like today’s drones – in the process of a delivery. Heinla envisions a human remotely controlling up to 10 or so Starship sidewalk delivery robots at some point, but unlike cars or even drones, what makes these robots ready for delivery deployment today is how slow they move.

“With a sidewalk robot, when a robot encounters a situation that is too complicated for the automatic system to handle, the robot can simply stop on the sidewalk and call up the (human) operator to help. This is the beauty of using a robot moving at pedestrian speeds on a sidewalk.”

Looking Forward

2016 saw significant advancement in food and cooking robotics. While the professional kitchen is further along in the food robot revolution in part because efforts to add robotics to centralized and professional food production facilities have excited for decades, we think 2017 could be an exciting year for the consumer market too as Moley, bartenderbots and even cooking robots like Sereneti finally make their debut. Investor interest in both sectors seems to be rising, so we also expect some new companies to debut in 2017 and beyond that bring robotics to the kitchen.

Lastly, there is a whole bunch of innovation going on in cooking automation and food 3D printing, areas which often overlap with kitchen robotics (take the pancakebot, for example). We expect those areas to be equally exciting in 2017.

Stay tuned and check back here at The Spoon as we cover the food robot revolution – and more – in 2017.

December 8, 2016

Investment In Cocktail Mixing Robots Is Heating Up

In the whiskey business, older usually means better. But if you’re Beam Suntory, the company which owns such iconic whiskey brands as Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark, sometimes new ain’t so bad either.

Which may be why the company recently became a strategic investor in Bartesian, a startup that creates drink mixing robots. While the exact amount of the investment is undisclosed, Bartesian co-founder Ryan Close puts the amount “in the millions.” The Bartesian cocktail mixing robot utilizes capsules to add the flavors and mixers to the cocktail. Close said they would use the money to expand their capsule selection, put the Bartesian into production and for R&D for the next-generation machine.

Beam Suntory isn’t the only investor taking an interest in the nascent robo-bartender market. Last week, Somabar quietly closed a $1.5 million funding round from Tech Coast Angels, an angel investor network focused on Southern California startups. The round was described as “bridge funding,” which means Somabar is still on the hunt for a larger series A round. This most recent investment follows an undisclosed investment in October 2014 and a round of debt financing in May of 2015.

Interest in home cocktail automation isn’t altogether surprising given the size of the $3 billion ready-to-drink (RTD) market. RTDs,  premixed cocktail drinks largely consumed at home, provide consumers mass-produced cocktail drinks that lack the specific tailoring or flourishes a bartender might provide. A home drink maker would give consumers a way to mix drinks that are closer to what they might get in a bar.

Not surprisingly, investment interest in robotic bartender technology also extends to the professional market. Monsieur, a startup based out of Atlanta, has been working on a robotic bartender since 2012 and received a $1.2 million Series A investment in February of this year.

And of course, robots aren’t the only game in town when it comes to bringing new tech to mixology. Late last year, Perfect Company, which makes the Perfect Drink scale system for home cocktail mixing, received a $4 million investment from Oregon Angel Fund. Perfect Company CEO Mike Wallace has indicated the company has sold hundreds of thousands of its Perfect Drink products.

Related: See Bartesian cofounder Ryan Close speak at the Smart Kitchen Summit

October 14, 2016

FabCafe Serves a Side of 3D Printing With Your Coffee

fabcafechocolateheadgal

Sure, you can get a latte to go at Japanese café FabCafe, but you might be missing the point. The innovative café from digital production company Loftwork takes 3D printing and robotics to the next level, with elaborate projects and workshops that allow its customers to experiment for themselves and create unique gifts and takeaways. The mini chain has just opened its seventh location, in Singapore, with other outposts in Japan, Taiwan, Spain, Thailand, and France. This year it plans to open yet two more locations, one in Europe and another in Asia.

Here are a few of its most amazing adventures.

Your Head, in Chocolate

fabcafechocolateheads

In 2013 FabCafe hosted a workshop with partner KS Design Lab that allowed its patrons the chance to get a full body 3D scan, 3D-print a mold of their head using a ProjetHD printer, fill it with chocolate, and plant the resulting edible treat in a box of bonbons for Valentine’s Day.

Another idea? Customized 3D-printed gummy selfies! Unlike the lame ones at Dylan’s Candy Bar, these are actually 3D and totally look like you.

fabcafegummyguy

You can still make a customized bust of your head in plastic, not chocolate (sorry), at the café: It only takes about three hours.

fabcafeplasticbust

Also make personalized stamps, puzzles, tote bags, and more.

Robots Make the Best Coffee

fabcaferobotarm

As part of a recent exhibit hosted at FabCafe in Japan, Bubble Lab showcased its robot arm coffee maker, which would make you a delicious single-origin coffee pour over.

Play With Your Food

fabcafemacarons

3D-print a special message on a macaron or a piece of white bread. It only takes about 30 minutes for the cookie and 15 for the bread, plus the time you’ll need to fiddle with your design on the iPad. Mine would say, “Chocolate chip cookies are better than macarons.”

We’ve seen the beginnings of this trend in the U.S. with 3D-printed latte art at places like Milk Street Cafe, in Boston, but it will only get more intense as 3D printing becomes easier. Here’s hoping we get a FabCafe in the States soon.

September 20, 2016

How Science Fiction Inspired Skype Cofounder To Start A Sidewalk Robot Company

In 2003, Ahti Heinla sat in a small office in Tallin, the capital city of Estonia, writing software.  The program he was working on was called Skype, which would go on to become the first mass-market Internet calling software, representing some 40% of all international calling traffic, and change the world along the way.

Now, 13 years and a few hundred yards away in downtown Tallin, Heinla is changing the world once again. Only now, instead of communication software, he’s doing it with robots.

Minority Report As Muse

Heinla’s newest company is called Starship, which he cofounded two years ago with Skype cofounder Janus Friis. The original idea for Starship came to Heinla and Friis as they were trying to think of ways in which they could change the world and, like so many of today’s big thinkers, found inspiration from science fiction movies.

“People think it can’t be done today, that we need some magical technology that doesn’t exist today, but that isn’t actually true.”

“When you look at science fiction movies like Minority Report and other movies set 10, 20, 30 years from now, nobody thinks 30 years from now there will be people knocking on your door with a delivery,” Heinla told me for the NextMarket podcast. “Everybody imagines it’s going to be flying cars and we realized that part of that revolution can be done today.”

 Heinla explained most people assume futuristic advancements such as those we see in movies aren’t possible, but that the technology is much closer than most realize.

“People think it can’t be done today, that we need some magical technology that doesn’t exist today, but that isn’t actually true.”

Heinla and his team realized that by focusing on making low-cost delivery robots that utilized humans to assist the robots when they encountered problems, the technology could be produced and brought to market today and not a few decades from now. Two years later, they’ve created their first 30 robots, tested them in urban environments from London to Seattle, and have signed up their first partners.

Moving Faster Than Google

Moving from brainstorm to the brink of a commercial rollout in just two years is an impressive feat, especially compared to other high-profile robotic vehicle efforts such as Google’s autonomous car initiative, something the search giant has been working on for the better part of a decade.

How did Starship do it? According to Heinla, they were able to do it because they focused on creating basic sidewalk delivery robots that moved at pedestrian speeds and weren’t 100% reliant on computers for every decision. In other words, slow speeds and humans made up the secret sauce that makes Starship’s fleet of robots possible today.

“Autonomous cars need to respond correctly to every possible situation that can arise on a road”, said Heinla. “With a sidewalk robot, when a robot encounters a situation that is too complicated for the automatic system to handle, the robot can simply stop on the sidewalk and call up the (human) operator to help. This is the beauty of using a robot moving at pedestrian speeds on a sidewalk.”

The human operators Heinla is referring to are Starship employees who monitor the movements of the robots remotely as they traverse along the sidewalk. Because the movement of the robot is slow (human speed) and semi-autonomous, it doesn’t require continuous monitoring. This allows a human monitor to multitask and operate multiple robots at one time. According to Heinla, their human robot guides will be monitor up to three robots to start, but he expects that number to go up to 100 robots as the robots get more intelligent.

“The minimum wage isn’t decreasing, it’s increasing. The majority of citizens (in the future) will not use it (human delivery). It’s too expensive.”

The Cost is in the Technology

Even though Starship uses human assistance as a way to get to market faster, Heinla believes the company can still ride a cost curve dictated by Moore’s law rather than human wages since their model relies largely on robot delivery, whereas today’s delivery business depends on a human showing up at your door.

“The minimum wage isn’t decreasing, it’s increasing,” said Heinla. “At something like $10 per delivery, the majority of citizens (in the future) will not use it (human delivery). It’s too expensive.”

This long term cost advantage relative to today’s all human delivery network doesn’t bode well for the status quo. A recent study by McKinsey predicted automation – or robots – will take away a large number of service jobs, in particular those that don’t require any special training. Delivery jobs today are somewhat unique in that they usually require a human to traverse through the world, but in the world Heinla is creating, delivery jobs will be done almost entirely with robots.

“With robots,” he said, ”the cost is in technology, in manufacturing and maintenance. The safest bet you can do is that technology getting cheaper all the time. It’s just a question of time before this (delivery) will be one dollar, fifty cents.”

Looking forward, Heinla believes they will have a fleet of approximately one thousand robots a year from now, and expects to have Starship robots in the US later this year.

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