US company Miso robotics is inventing robots that can unburden kitchen staff at fast food chains.
ADVERTISEMENTAccording to the National Restaurant Association in the US, about 50 per cent of US restaurant owners considered recruiting and retaining employees to be their top challenge in 2022.
Meet the game-changers: robots that can help offload tasks in the back of house.
Using artificial intelligence (AI), "Flippy 2" the robot can take over an entire station at a restaurant.
It can fry frozen ingredients and place the ready-to-serve food on a tray while juggling different recipes simultaneously.
Miso Robotics, the company behind it, develops AI-powered machines to automate tasks that often cause bottlenecks at restaurants.
Mike Bell, CEO of Miso robotics, assures that Flippy 2 is an innovative addition to the kitchen and not a replacement with which they're seeking to drive out humans.
Speeding up service at drive-thrus
"The restaurant industry has not been eager adopters of technology. When you look at the restaurant industry today, the last really big innovation was the dishwasher in many ways," Bell told Reuters.
The company first developed a machine to flip burgers, Flippy 1.
A beverage-making robot that can pour and seal drinks, named Sippy, is currently in development.
Bell says such robots can help speed up the process at drive-thrus and humans will be "delighted to have the help so they can do other things".
"There'll be a point in time when humans walk into a restaurant and look at a robot and say 'hey, remember the old days when humans used to do that kind of thing?'" he added.
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