Flippy the Robot Takes Over Burger Duties At California Restaurant (ktla.com)

Chain eatery CaliBurger announced today that its location in Pasadena is the first to employ Flippy, a burger-flipping robot developed by Miso Robotics. The robot is able to take over the cooking duties after a human puts the patties on the grill. KTLA reports: "The kitchen of the future will always have people in it, but we see that kitchen as having people and robots," said David Zito, co-founder and chief executive officer of Miso Robotics. Flippy uses thermal imaging, 3D and camera vision to sense when to flip -- and when to remove. "It detects the temperature of the patty, the size of the patty and the temperature of the grill surface," explained Zito. The device also learns through artificial intelligence -- basically, the more burgers that Flippy flips, the smarter it gets. Right now, cheese and toppings are added by a co-worker. CaliBurger CEO John Miller says the robot can cut down on costs as it will work a position that has a high turnover rate. "It's not a fun job -- it's hot, it's greasy, it's dirty," said Miller about the grill cook position. Less turnover means less time training new grill cooks. Flippy costs about $60,000 minimum and is expected to be used at other CaliBurger locations soon.

Comments

GNAA - GAY NIGGERS ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA

[Anonymous Coward]

G_N_A_A (G.A.Y N1GGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which
gathers G.A.Y N1GGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being G.A.Y N1GGERS.

Are you G.A.Y ?
Are you a N1GGER ?
Are you a G.A.Y N1GGER ?

If you answered "Yes" to any of the above questions, then G_N_A_A (G.A.Y N1GGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) might be exactly what you've been looking for!
Join G_N_A_A (G.A.Y N1GGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) today, and enjoy all the benefits of being a full-time G_N_A_A member.
G_N_A_A (G.A.Y N1GGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the fastest-growing G.A.Y N1GGER community with THOUSANDS of members all over United States of America. You, too, can be a part of G_N_A_A if you join today!

Why not? It's quick and easy - only 3 simple steps!

First, you have to obtain a copy of G.A.Y N1GGERS FROM OUTER SPACE THE MOVIE and watch it.

You can watch G.A.Y N1GGERS FROM OUTER SPACE on Youtube.

Second, you need to succeed in posting a G_N_A_A "first post" on slashdot.org , a popular "news for trolls" website

Third, you need to join the official G_N_A_A irc channel #G_N_A_A on EFNet, and apply for membership.
Talk to one of the ops or any of the other members in the channel to sign up today!

If you are having trouble locating #G_N_A_A, the official G.A.Y N1GGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA irc channel, you might be on a wrong irc network. The correct network is EFNet, and you can connect to irc.secsup.org or irc.easynews.com as one of the EFNet servers.
If you do not have an IRC client handy, you are free to use the G_N_A_A Java IRC client by clicking here.

If you have mod points and would like to support G_N_A_A, please moderate this post up.

This post brought to you by Penisbird , a proud member of the G_N_A_A

G_____________________________________naann_______ ________G
N_____________________________nnnaa__nanaaa_______ ________A
A____________________aanana__nannaa_nna_an________ ________Y
A_____________annna_nnnnnan_aan_aa__na__aa________ ________*
G____________nnaana_nnn__nn_aa__nn__na_anaann_MERI CA______N
N___________ana__nn_an___an_aa_anaaannnanaa_______ ________I
A___________aa__ana_nn___nn_nnnnaa___ana__________ ________G
A__________nna__an__na___nn__nnn___SSOCIATION_of__ ________G
G__________ana_naa__an___nnn______________________ ________E
N__________ananan___nn___aan_IGGER________________ ________R
A__________nnna____naa____________________________ ________S
A________nnaa_____anan____________________________ ________*
G________anaannana________________________________ ________A
N________ananaannn_AY_____________________________ ________S
A________ana____nn_________IRC-EFNET-#G_N_A_A________ ________S
A_______nn_____na_________________________________ ________O
*_______aaaan_____________________________________ ________C
Gary Niger gary_niger@G_N_A_A.us G_N_A_A Corporate Headquarters 143 Rolloffle Avenue Tarzana, California 91356
Enid Al-Punjabi enid_al_punjabi@G_N_A_A.us G_N_A_A World Headquarters No.33 Kyutei Bld. 2F, Shinjuku 2-11-7, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan ????????2??11-6
Copyright (c) 2003-2015 G.A.Y N1GGER Association of America

Ich Bindawalross (London) - G_N_A_A (NYSE:

Re:GNAA - GAY NIGGERS ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA

[Anonymous Coward]

havent seen this one in a while. wish rob malda was back. and klerck. and sexykellyosbourne. and adolphhitroll and wipo troll.

Goat Simulator is Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

G_N_A_A (G.A.Y N1GGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which
gathers G.A.Y N1GGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being G.A.Y N1GGERS.

Are you G.A.Y ?
Are you a N1GGER ?
Are you a G.A.Y N1GGER ?

If you answered "Yes" to any of the above questions, then G_N_A_A (G.A.Y N1GGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) might be exactly what you've been looking for!
Join G_N_A_A (G.A.Y N1GGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) today, and enjoy all the benefits of being a full-time G_N_A_A member.
G_N_A_A (G.A.Y N1GGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the fastest-growing G.A.Y N1GGER community with THOUSANDS of members all over United States of America. You, too, can be a part of G_N_A_A if you join today!

Why not? It's quick and easy - only 3 simple steps!

First, you have to obtain a copy of G.A.Y N1GGERS FROM OUTER SPACE THE MOVIE and watch it.

You can watch G.A.Y N1GGERS FROM OUTER SPACE on Youtube.

Second, you need to succeed in posting a G_N_A_A "first post" on slashdot.org , a popular "news for trolls" website

Third, you need to join the official G_N_A_A irc channel #G_N_A_A on EFNet, and apply for membership.
Talk to one of the ops or any of the other members in the channel to sign up today!

If you are having trouble locating #G_N_A_A, the official G.A.Y N1GGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA irc channel, you might be on a wrong irc network. The correct network is EFNet, and you can connect to irc.secsup.org or irc.easynews.com as one of the EFNet servers.
If you do not have an IRC client handy, you are free to use the G_N_A_A Java IRC client by clicking here.

If you have mod points and would like to support G_N_A_A, please moderate this post up.

This post brought to you by Penisbird , a proud member of the G_N_A_A

G_____________________________________naann_______ ________G
N_____________________________nnnaa__nanaaa_______ ________A
A____________________aanana__nannaa_nna_an________ ________Y
A_____________annna_nnnnnan_aan_aa__na__aa________ ________*
G____________nnaana_nnn__nn_aa__nn__na_anaann_MERI CA______N
N___________ana__nn_an___an_aa_anaaannnanaa_______ ________I
A___________aa__ana_nn___nn_nnnnaa___ana__________ ________G
A__________nna__an__na___nn__nnn___SSOCIATION_of__ ________G
G__________ana_naa__an___nnn______________________ ________E
N__________ananan___nn___aan_IGGER________________ ________R
A__________nnna____naa____________________________ ________S
A________nnaa_____anan____________________________ ________*
G________anaannana________________________________ ________A
N________ananaannn_AY_____________________________ ________S
A________ana____nn_________IRC-EFNET-#G_N_A_A________ ________S
A_______nn_____na_________________________________ ________O
*_______aaaan_____________________________________ ________C
Gary Niger gary_niger@G_N_A_A.us G_N_A_A Corporate Headquarters 143 Rolloffle Avenue Tarzana, California 91356
Enid Al-Punjabi enid_al_punjabi@G_N_A_A.us G_N_A_A World Headquarters No.33 Kyutei Bld. 2F, Shinjuku 2-11-7, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan ????????2??11-6
Copyright (c) 2003-2015 G.A.Y N1GGER Association of America

Ich Bindawalross (London) - G_N_A_A (NYSE:

Re:Goat Simulator is Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

this about goats or n1ggers?

Flip It

[mentil]

Does Flippy flip flimsy fast food flippantly? Throw in Talkie Toaster and I'm THERE.

Re: Flip It

[Anonymous Coward]

Rumor has it KFC are working on their own robot called Flippy Bird...

What do the humans do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Clean up after the robots?

Re:What do the humans do?

[Calydor]

In the immortal words of EDI, "I enjoy the sight of humans on their knees."

Re:What do the humans do?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should read Manna by Marshall Brain from 2003.

Re:What do the humans do?

[HornWumpus]

No you shouldn't.

Marshall stop spamming /. Your as bad as the other one, old "what's his 'tard"?

Wage increase = Job lost.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually this is Great News

We are sick and tired of having burger flippers protesting over wage increase

Not a fun job?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the first reason is because its not a fun job, and we can save money..

How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Priced yourself right out of a job, didn't you?

Guess what? You can't legislate what your labor is actually worth.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Kiuas]

Priced yourself right out of a job, didn't you?

Guess what? You can't legislate what your labor is actually worth.

No, the minimum wage has absolutely nothing to do with this. It's about total cost per hour, it's about efficiency and machines are across the board more efficient than human beings, even if the human beings make next to nothing. Let's do the math.

The machine costs 60 000. Assume a pay of 5 dollars an hour and you're running the place 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. That comes down to 17280 a year. The machine will still be more cost-efficient that a human being., it will just take 3,5 years to pay for itself rather than the less than a year it will take on a 15 dollars an hour pay. Hell, China is leading the way in automation of production, and they're using it to replace workers that make around 10-15 bucks a day because the machines are simply more cost-efficient and reliable than human workers even at those wages. So your equivalents in China are essentially yelling: 'yeah, how about that, priced yourself right out of a job! If you only were satisfied with working at 3 dollars a day you maybe could have kept your job for another 5 years before it was automated!"

The thing to realize is that we're fast approaching a point in which untrained or lowly trained human labor will become essentially worthless, and even most positions requiring a higher education will be in the same situation a couple decades from now with the advances in AI. Anyone who thinks human beings can in the long term remain competitive with systems that are specifically designed to be more cost-efficient than humans, doesn't understand a thing about automation or economics, or what this shift means for economies overall.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

But this is wonderful news! They've created new jobs for humans, at chic restaurants that employ real human grill cooks! You'll pay $20 extra to have your burger flipped by a human, won't you.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Kjella]

That comes down to 17280 a year. The machine will still be more cost-efficient that a human being

Well, except that all it does is flip the burger... it doesn't put raw patties on the oven, it doesn't season it, it doesn't put cheese on it. And I doubt it's got any capacity to tell when something's wrong and stop and/or fix it. It doesn't come close to doing the full job. Robots do great for high volume production, like you want to churn out a million iPhones. But Momentum Machines showed off their burger-making robot in 2012 and it's still not here, this flipper is like 1% of the process. By all means automation is real... but this "we'll all be out of a job in five years" hyperbole is too much. Sure if you're young enough to be planning a career many decades out or what your kids will do when they grow up maybe it's a big deal. But when you see how much they struggle to automate the jobs even high school drop-outs do we're not going to have "I, robot" style assistants in my lifetime.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Priced yourself right out of a job, didn't you?

Guess what? You can't legislate what your labor is actually worth.

No, the minimum wage has absolutely nothing to do with this. ..

It has EVERYTHING to do with this.

The thing to realize is that we're fast approaching a point in which untrained or lowly trained human labor will become essentially worthless...

Guess what? EVERYBODY starts out untrained.

Things like $15/hour minimum-wage laws de facto ensure untrained people with no experience ARE STUCK in poverty.

Is that your goal? Pricing untrained workers out of the labor market and leaving them stuck in a cycle of poverty?

Because that's the demonstrable result of things like high minimum-wage laws.

But hey, you've convinced yourself that YOU CARE!!!!! by pushing for a "living wage" for people whose lives you simply don't understand, right? Next thing you know, you'll tell me it's a great idea to force all employers to give health insurance coverage to all full-time workers, and that won't simply cause employers to limit workers to part-time status.

Again: you can't legislate what a person's labor is actually worth.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Priced yourself right out of a job, didn't you?

Guess what? You can't legislate what your labor is actually worth.

No, the minimum wage has absolutely nothing to do with this. ..

It has EVERYTHING to do with this.

Oops, looks like you forget to refute the second paragraph, which totally destroyed your point. But hey, nice straw man.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Hal_Porter]

The machine costs 60 000. Assume a pay of 5 dollars an hour and you're running the place 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. That comes down to 17280 a year. The machine will still be more cost-efficient that a human being., it will just take 3,5 years to pay for itself rather than the less than a year it will take on a 15 dollars an hour pay.

In business it's a lot easier to justify an investment that pays off in one year than one which pays off in 3 to 5. So increasing the costs of human labour or decreasing the cost of machines leads to humans being replace with machines. I.e. your calculation actually proves the OP's point rather than disproving it.

It's no coincidence that McDonalds and co decided to start installing kiosks in addition to the workers taking orders at counters. Firstly it enables them to sell more stuff. Secondly it enables them to move some people from counter service to the kitchen. It's a lot easier to replace a human taking orders with a touchscreen than it to replace someone cooking and assembling burgers.

Still as a malicious AI would no doubt observe "Relax. It's not like we're grinding up the dead meatsacks to make the food for the ones we currently need to keep alive. Even though, come to think of it, that's a really good idea".

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Kiuas]

It has EVERYTHING to do with this

No. Again, the amount of the minimum wage has nothing to do with the facts that humans cannot compete with a machine specifically designed to be more cost-efficient at a given task. The fact that you still do not understand this after being given the example from China where pays are a fraction of the West baffles my mind.

Guess what? EVERYBODY starts out untrained.

Giess what? This has nothing to do with the argument.

Things like $15/hour minimum-wage laws de facto ensure untrained people with no experience ARE STUCK in poverty.

Is that your goal? Pricing untrained workers out of the labor market and leaving them stuck in a cycle of poverty?

No. There are plenty of western countries in which fast food wporkers make around or above 15 dollars an hour and are not in fact stuck in poverty. But the thing is, whether they make 5 dollars or 20 dollars an hour does not alter the fact that in 20-30 years no-one will be making anything doing these kinds of repetitive manual tasks because again no matter the awge point automation is the more efficient route to go, and that's what companies care about. Unless the societies at large address this by adopting systems like universal basic income, the vast majority of people will become stuck in poverty because they have no skillset that would allow them to find work, and assuming that everyone will simply acquire a higher education and be able to find a job is unrealistic, both because not everyone has the mental capacity to be highly educated, and secondly because there will simply not exist enough of these kinds of positions to employ everyone.

Next thing you know, you'll tell me it's a great idea to force all employers to give health insurance coverage to all full-time workers, and that won't simply cause employers to limit workers to part-time status.

If your goal was to come off as the most stereotypical 'ignorant American', you've succeeded with flying colors. You do understand that every single industrialized country outside the US, including my own, already does this and does this with the health care costs being less than those in the US, right? Universal health care hasn't been a point of contention anywhere but in the States for several decades, as you're the only first world nation that still does not get that it's the waty to go if you want to both reduce the costs of the health care system and keep people healthier.

Again: you can't legislate what a person's labor is actually worth.

Again, I never claimed that, I pointed out that the root of the problem will remain totally regardless of whether the minimum wage exists or not and how much it is, and you chose to reply by wrapping yourself in the American flag and screaming about totally unrelated things.

You seriously need to do some reading on the topic(s) and educate yourself. Because if you think that automation and issues of poverty can be solved by removing or lowering the minimum wage, your level of ignorance is fast approaching that of your current president.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[geekmux]

The thing to realize is that we're fast approaching a point in which untrained or lowly trained human labor will become essentially worthless, and even most positions requiring a higher education will be in the same situation a couple decades from now with the advances in AI. Anyone who thinks human beings can in the long term remain competitive with systems that are specifically designed to be more cost-efficient than humans, doesn't understand a thing about automation or economics, or what this shift means for economies overall.

Uh, "shift" in economies?

When 20 - 30% of the human population is unemployable 10 - 20 years from now due to automation, there will be a considerable disruption to global economies. This alone will likely cause chaos, so we may not even get to the second phase.

When 90% of the human population is unemployable 30 - 40 years from now due to good-enough AI, there will be no "economy" to speak of. Most of the population will belong to the Global Welfare State. And UBI will become nothing more than Welfare 2.0 for the masses. The uber-rich who own the automation/AI solutions will be the only ones with an income, and they will do all the things they do today to avoid paying the taxes that will be necessary to fund UBI programs. The human race won't be thriving at that point; they will merely be surviving.

Solve for the Disease of Greed. Otherwise, the future is inevitable.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Kiuas]

it doesn't put raw patties on the oven, it doesn't season it, it doesn't put cheese on it. And I doubt it's got any capacity to tell when something's wrong and stop and/or fix it. It doesn't come close to doing the full job

That was not my point. My point is that looking at the wage made by the guy who's replaced (or partially replaced) by the machine is not an argument really. Put another way: saying that 'if people were just satisfied with making less they'd be safe from having their jobs automated' is a false statement.

but this "we'll all be out of a job in five years" hyperbole is too much. - -
But when you see how much they struggle to automate the jobs even high school drop-outs do we're not going to have "I, robot" style assistants in my lifetime.

To be clear, I'm not saying we'll all be out of jobs going ahead, but especially unskilled or lowly trained labor will be disappearing, and it's happening at a rate faster than you probably realize already. The factories that are moved from Asia back to the west employ a fraction of the people they used to, because automating as much as possible is the economically sound option, and this trend will only keep going, and it will get faster the more commonplace these systems become.

I'm not saying we'll get to 'I robot' -level even within my lifespan as someone who's soon 28, but we don't need to get that far for most non-university educated people to have trouble finding work when most of these menial tasks are automated, which will lead to major issues unless we're prepared.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[91degrees]

I don't think the goal of society should be that we end up paying people a pittance for doing a tedious repetitive job that a machine can do.

If we are going to make people do tedious repetitive jobs, then we can at least pay them a reasonable amount.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[mysidia]

No, the minimum wage has absolutely nothing to do with this. It's about total cost per hour, it's about efficiency and machines are across the board more efficient .....

No... you couldn't be more wrong here. While it's true that machines COULD be more-efficient than humans, Magnitude matters a lot.

A human worker that does the same stuff for $15/Hour that was previously done for $7.50/Hour is naturally 50% less efficient than before the increase.

It can very well be UP TO NOW (before the minimum wage) companies had a viable profitable business, AND considering developing and/or using machine cooks would be seen as highly risky.

Now with minimum wage increases looming the view on machines changes, because "This is now necessary for the business to survive and be profitable ---- we've gotta take this risk now!"

So the minimum wage increase becomes basically a catalyst that forces businesses in a direction they might not have explored, or considered an acceptable risk for a long time, otherwise.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[houghi]

Imagine that we are able to train all the untrained people. That would mean more trained people and that will lower the wages for trained jobs.
This is not a race to the bottom, this is a freefall.

And at some point enough people will be fed up with it. It will be just another class revolution as we have had many in the past already. Not sure if it will be like the French revolution where the Royalty of then will be replaced by the CxO of now. Or like the Russians when they threw out the Tzar or a social revolution with the Unions like they had in Europe. It could be something completely different altogether. Something we have not yet seen. But i guess it is going to be messy and the outcome might not be what anybody expected for the first few decades.

I can just pray to my atheist God that it will be after my lifetime.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[DigiShaman]

As I've always said, the US is heading toward insolvency because of automation. And it goes like this...

-First of all, take a look at the Federal Debt Federal Debt See that? Doesn't look too good, does it?

-Now, factor in globalism where there's a MASSIVE wealth transfer from United States of America to overseas. Any wealth generated in GDP is coming back to the US as opportunity, but concentrated in the major cities. This hollowed out the urban regions as they can't compete on both wages and product (it's why Trump won BTW).

-Add in automation, and now we have a force that's inherently DEFLATIONARY on the economy. It's tantamount to a slave force. Machines don't value themselves, so they're essentially free labor after you account human labor of design and maintenance of said machines.

-This will lead to lead to higher unemployment after the economic "Trump High" wears off (the crash will be a killer depression) in terms of less people in the work force as a over-all percentage of the population.

-More people will vote in a livable wage. More money is printed, massive stagflation kicks in from both inflationary and automated deflationary forces. Money becomes essentially a meaningless store of wealth while simultaneously being required.

-US dollar abandoned, or a massive World War settles reshapes the geopolitical and economic landscape. Or, a combination of all of the above.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Charcharodon]

" Unless the societies at large address this by adopting systems like universal basic income"

Sorry Timmy but you had a 1.9 GPA. In order to qualify for any kind of social assistance, ie UBI, you have to go see the autoDoc and get the snip snip procedure (Sterilization) otherwise have fun starving.

A no strings attached UBI will never happen even with a very high percentage of automation.

I for one will be using my Flippy robot with a club to run hippies/hipsters off my property rather than to feed them.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[bluefoxlucid]

When 20 - 30% of the human population is unemployable 10 - 20 years from now due to automation, there will be a considerable disruption to global economies.

This won't happen. We automated farming, we automated manufacture, we automated IT. Everything you use today used to take hundreds or thousands of times as many human labor hours to provide. That's right: we've eliminated 99.999% of all jobs in the past two centuries.

What we did, we started buying 10,000 times as much stuff, where "stuff" is quantified as "what used to take so much labor". We only need 1 in 10,000 workers to supply X now, so we buy 10,000 X, where X is the generic output unit.

Let's say your wage increased arbitrarily. At what point would you cease being able to spend money due to not being able to imagine anything you want to buy? Think about a good, high-quality, home-cooked meal with steak and real red sweet potatoes, fish, crabs, lobster, the expensive stuff. Now imagine eating that every day, every meal, and you pretty much just drive up to a McDonalds-alike and order it, and it's no more expensive than what you pay now for food. Would you slave away at home for hours eating cheap, or would you spend your limitless wealth on this new stuff?

The new stuff still costs $5 because it takes $5 worth of labor (jobs) to make it.

Scaling up your spending like that multiplies the meager labor requirements into something supported by... well, your spending. The diversion of wage into consumption creates revenue and thus profit. Seriously. Corporations don't create money when they pay you; they use the money people spend buying from them to pay wages.

The only problem is progress causes transitional unemployment. Too much at once--too fast for your economy to shift demand and drive new supply, thus reallocating labor to new jobs--causes a pile-up of unemployment. If it's paced correctly, progress is limitless in the sense that it never results in permanent increases in unemployment.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[GLMDesigns]

[quote]The thing to realize is that we're fast approaching a point in which untrained or lowly trained human labor will become essentially worthless, [/quote]

Therefore we shouldn't be importing millions of untrained laborers under the guise that Americans wouldn't do the work - or should we?

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you have good points. I question your mathematical analysis because you missed many factors.

The one thing you have totally missed, the $15 an hour minimum wage battle accelerated automation of these types of jobs. Yes, it was eventually going to happen, but it wasn't worth the R&D cost to build and design the robots yet when you can pay worker $8 an hour. When the workers and government start pushing $15 an hour, it became worth it and suddenly Kiosks start showing up, then burger flipping robots, etc, etc.

Same thing happened with gas prices. I work at a place that makes Biodiesel, when gas got up to $4 a gallon, suddenly we are getting grants to expand capacity, alternate fuels research starts going gang busters, then gas prices dropped back down and we are no producing as much biodiesel and most of the alternate fuel research stopped. Same thing here except once the $15 an hour goes in, it won't go away so companies started pushing the automation.

BTW, I am a Controls engineer, automation is my field. This is my field, I have been watching all of these trends and things happen for the past 15 years. If you can't see the connection between the $15 an hour discussion and automation, you just missed it.

Re: How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the higher the minimum wage, the higher the money you save when using a robot!

Might as well rise it to $30 and save even more money!!

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[DaveV1.0]

This is how it begins. Over the next 5 or 10 years, machines will be doing all those things and will have replaced many fast food workers because they are stupid enough to think they deserve $15.00 for flipping burgers.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Labor costs are more than just the pay rate/hr. There are payroll taxes, social security, benefits. So your 15/hr rate can easily cost the employer well over $20/hr. You would also have to factor in cleaning and maintenance costs for the robot. So your initial 60,00 plus yearly maintenance costs may be closer to 70,000 for the first year. Using your 12.hr days, it would pay for itself in about 10 months.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[AvitarX]

There shouldn't be jobs that can't support a person when worked full-time.

Either I end up supporting that person, or they become a vector of disease and crime contributing to blight.

Much better to have one person make a livable wage than 3 people making not even close to enough.

The amount of government assistance is about the same (efficiency gain of fewer people), but the company saves money and one person if freed from the system

The overall economy grows.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[AvitarX]

Exactly, minimum wage increases are about increasing innovation and productivity.

Why would you think that's a bad thing?

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Ol Olsoc]

The thing to realize is that we're fast approaching a point in which untrained or lowly trained human labor will become essentially worthless, and even most positions requiring a higher education will be in the same situation a couple decades from now with the advances in AI. Anyone who thinks human beings can in the long term remain competitive with systems that are specifically designed to be more cost-efficient than humans, doesn't understand a thing about automation or economics, or what this shift means for economies overall.

I suppose if the goal is making the product as cheaply as possible, and nothing else matters, well then that's just great.

But between you and me and the guy living under the bridge, in my world the goal is to sell the damn hamburger. At some point, with the continued elimination of jobs and the upward creep into white collar jobs, we might make those burgers very cheap indeed, but not have much of a consumer market..

For some reason a lot of people who know a lot about economics and making money on the supply side completely ignore the side of the equation that is the consumer. If people who would use your product have no money because they cannot find work, then they aren't buying your wonderful cheap product.

Of course, what is occurring is as jobs are eliminated, the first adopters of this technology do well. That's because others who would buy the product will still be employed. But as more jobs are eliminated, there will certainly come a tipping point when your customers disappear.

And if what is now surplus population is supported by a minimum basic income, well that's just going to amount to a tax that sucks up what profit you might have made by eliminating the jobs.

And as for retraining for a higher level job, certainly some can be retrained, but on the scale of human abilities, a lot of people working the most menial jobs are there because that's about the level they are capable of working at.

Since this is inevitable, there needs to be more discussion on the looming problem of what to do with the people who have been made completely useless.

Do we simply terminate them? Put them in concentration camps and feed them as little as possible and work at shortening their lifespan as much as possible in order to not spend too much on them?

Because the effects of this are completely ignored, or given the answer "Well someone has to keep the robots running" as some sort of strange idea that somehow more jobs will be created keeping the automation running than were eliminated by the automation - that would be an utter failure of the rationale for the automation.

Intead, we are charging ahead with a supply side only rationale which looks good for a short time, but is unsustainable.

We'll probably be making some tough decisions in the near future. The dark side of me envisions a new universal health care system that consists of a .38 cal pistol and cyanide capsules. If you become unproductive with no real options, you cure the problem with your medicine of choice.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

All the unskilled workers the robots are replacing will eventually become meat patties.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[apoc.famine]

Well, except that all it does is flip the burger

You say that like it's no big deal, but it's a really, really big deal. It doesn't call in sick. It doesn't have car trouble and miss a shift. It doesn't come in late. It doesn't come in hungover. It doesn't cause drama with the other employees. It doesn't spit in the food. It doesn't require training every 3-4 months because the previous robot doing that job quit, and it's a new hire. And when new ones are deployed, they don't need training. They can just have the brains of the current one copied over.

All of this represents huge savings for a company. It's not just the cost of the robot that has to be considered. It's part of a much bigger structure, and I'd bet that it immediately cuts down on some externalized costs.

And yes, all this does is flip a burger. But how much longer before another "all it does" is cut potatoes and fry them? And how much longer before another "all it does" is season and form patties? (Actually, for most big chains that's happened already.)

But when you see how much they struggle to automate the jobs even high school drop-outs do....

Like flip burgers?

I'm really not sure how you come to the conclusion that the concern of automating jobs away is hyperbole. Lets take all these hypothetical 18 year old HS dropouts who used to make $7/hr flipping burgers. Kids who can't really do math, struggle with basic literacy, and in short don't have really useful life skills. What other jobs are increasing in number that would fit those (lack of) skill-sets, in order to offset the ones lost to automation?

We're automating janitorial work, kitchen work, automotive work, factory work, etc. Almost every possible job that someone with minimal skills could do is getting squeezed, and there just aren't new ones being created. What new jobs are being created are high-skill jobs, and that doesn't offset the loss of low-skill jobs.

Can you point to an industry with an increasing need for low-skill workers? If so, please share. Because I can't find anywhere near enough to dent the number of people that are and will be put out of work due to automation.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS.

The real minimum wage is zero.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it better to make $100/year with $1 bread, or $1million/year with $10,000 bread?

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[WinstonWolfIT]

Suggests Dylan as a prophet. A hard rain's going to fall. I feel it too.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

When the humans flock to the human-staffed places, the robots will be unemployed --- they should probably just learn to pick tomatoes and solve our illegal immigration problems that way.

Slavery didn't end because of the cotton-picking robots that pick our cotton now. The end of slavery drove development of those robots, and now, those robots are more cost effective than slaves! They would have ended slavery had they existed ... humans are really inefficient ...

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[kaatochacha]

One point, on universal healthcare, that is usually ignored: The US spends MASSIVE amounts of money funding health care, which in turn allows health care companies to use it as a sponge: Making up for profits lost in other markets. They can charge less in France because they make up for it in the US.
I personally am in favor of single payer healthcare in the US, being a US citizen, but once that money making machine is gone, do you really think costs across the world won't increase significantly?
If I was British/French/Canadian/etc, I'd be praying the US never nationalizes health care.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[kaatochacha]

The McDonalds kiosks are a nightmare: Nobody ever uses them, staff have to be dedicated to TRY to get people to use them, Half the time they're out of receipts and you give up, the other half the time you pay cash and have to use the counter-person anyway.

But more importantly, they're a failure because they put the impetus for resolving problems on the purchaser, not the staff. If I use a kiosk and can't find my item/can't order what I want, the problem becomes mine.I have to fix it, I feel silly if I can't.
If I order from a person, the problem immediately becomes theirs. They have at least some training on this, and understand the system better.

All kiosks do in McDonalds is make people feel dumb. The last thing you want to do, as a business, is have your customers associate shopping there with feeling embarrassed and stupid.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Falos]

Hummingbird drone with pepper spray.

Or was that tongue-in-cheek? A serious conversation about how Our Betters will arms their compounds is perfectly appropriate here. If you score the contract for their tazerbots your grandkids won't even have to live in terrafoam.

Better to be the jackboot, or whatever Card said.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Green Mountain Bot]

That *might* apply to drugs and devices, but the vast majority of the cost of health care is doctors' & nurses' salaries, real estate, and facilities. None of those are things that are made cheaper abroad by being overpriced in the US.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Hal_Porter]

To be honest I've never used one. Still even if McDonalds have messed up the implementation it doesn't doom the idea. It'd be like saying 'Well the [first automobile] is unreliable. Let's stick to horses'.

Technology will move on. I'm sure in the long run you'll see restaurants where you order at a console and the food is prepared by unseen humans. In fact I went to one in NYC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Also in the long run someone's going to work out a way for those meals to be mixed by machines with humans just loading the ingredient hoppers.

And increasing the minimum wage will drive this process faster. To be honest things like Eatsa are going to happen anyway.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

The uber-rich who own the automation/AI solutions will be the only ones with an income, and they will do all the things they do today to avoid paying the taxes that will be necessary to fund UBI programs.

Assuming they're not too busy being strung up by the masses.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[cayenne8]

If your goal was to come off as the most stereotypical 'ignorant American', you've succeeded with flying colors. You do understand that every single industrialized country outside the US, including my own, already does this and does this with the health care costs being less than those in the US, right? Universal health care hasn't been a point of contention anywhere but in the States for several decades, as you're the only first world nation that still does not get that it's the waty to go if you want to both reduce the costs of the health care system and keep people healthier.

Hmm...and what percentage of your salary goes to taxes, eh? Do you have a lot of people near the 50% range?

Also, you can afford socialized medicine in a large part due to you not having to pay for your own defense like the US does...we not only cover our asses, but also much of Europe and all other allies. If we pull back on that, pull back on all the foreign aid/bribes....ya'll would likely have to think how much you do socialize medicine, those multi-week annual vacations, and the other freebies you give out to your populace, including now being overrun by your new "citizens" migrating from the middle east.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

> the problem becomes mine I have to fix it
Every business wants to do this with everything. We have your money, why are you still here?

Fine, it's our problem. We still don't "fix" shit, here's a refund. It's "no questions asked" because we don't bother with that either.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

> we already eliminated unskilled jobs
Uh, no, Billy the 18yo prole can currently find a way to sell himself upwards and pay for school. It's gotten narrow (that was your point right?) but the lucky half of Prolekistan can still export.

I'd love to hear what job you think a billion instances of Billy will exporting upwards in 2150. Prolekistan's export is going to die. At least I'm unlikely to see it in my time.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[cayenne8]

That *might* apply to drugs and devices, but the vast majority of the cost of health care is doctors' & nurses' salaries, real estate, and facilities. None of those are things that are made cheaper abroad by being overpriced in the US.

Actually much of the cost is with middle men and bean counters not directly associated with healthcare givers.

I don't have a problem with my medical professionals making 6 figure salaries.....they sacrifice a lot to get the training, and often work grueling hours in conditions that would make most people puke....

Before we had HMO's and all the companies we do now, when Dr's were more independent, hung to their own shingle, and insurance was termed "Major Medical" (aka ONLY for emergencies)...prices were much cheaper and affordable.

And, part of keeping it that way, was people saving and spending their own money for routine medical needs and voting for Drs and treatment with their wallets.

Also, back then (I know from experience) Dr's often varied how much patients were billed according to their means.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[dryeo]

Well having real live servants will be a status symbol. The rich can come home to their army of very obedient servants, get their footwear licked clean and such and abuse their servants in other ways secure in the knowledge that there are 10+ potential servants lined up at the door willing to take that $10 a day job for each you have employed..
They'll be other ways having humans in the chain will be a status symbol in a world of robots. The best restaurants will have human servers and chefs if you're willing to pay the premium, and some of that premium might even trickle down to the employees.
They'll be status in having a human to clean your self driving cars sensors and once again due to the surplus of labour, it'll be cheap.
Prostitution is always popular when cheap enough. Abusing a robot just isn't as satisfying as abusing a real human.
I'm sure there are lots of other ways to employ people in demeaning ways for next to no pay and have huge lineups of potential employees. Great for the owners of the robots, who will have more money then they know what to do with.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[sjames]

The sad part is that we should be celebrating the day when robots take over all the work. Especially unpleasant work. But because of the screwed up way we run the economy, we snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and turn it into a fearful threat to survival instead.

FAIL!

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except all that new stuff is also made by robots. So again, how are those people earning money to buy more stuff?

Not to mention the planet cannot take another drastic increase in production like you propose.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[cayenne8]

If I use a kiosk and can't find my item/can't order what I want, the problem becomes mine.I have to fix it, I feel silly if I can't. If I order from a person, the problem immediately becomes theirs. They have at least some training on this, and understand the system better.

Seriously??

Most clerks these days, especially in FF, seem to have the IQ and concentration capabilities of a small soap dish.

If you ask them anything remotely off the script, that isn't a 1 button push on the register, they get that blank look in their eyes, and often can't figure it out and have to call a manager.

And these days...the managers seem to more and more be at a loss for any problem solving for the customer.

Good, intelligent customer servers is DEAD today...and has been for awhile.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[SuricouRaven]

Don't forget the overheads. No training costs. No HR or legal costs. Predictable performance, uninterrupted by family emergencies or sick days which would otherwise call for rescheduling shifts.

The kitchen of the future will still have humans. Just fewer of them. Possibly a lot fewer.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[SuricouRaven]

Agriculture still needs large numbers of low-skill workers - no-one has made a good fruit-picking robot yet. It's highly seasonal work though. Tends to attract a lot of undocumented labor - farmers get cheaper temporary workers, workers get a job where they can disappear once the harvest season is over.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[sjames]

Note that they're replacing human labor in China with robots too, and they're only making $15/DAY. Do you REALLY think someone in the U.S. can afford to live on less than $15 a DAY?

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Socguy]

They're not that bad. I agree that they are impersonal, however, it's kind of nice to place your order then go sit down at a table, read the paper and McDonalds staff brings your food when it's ready.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Curunir_wolf]

Don't worry about it. Those former burger-flippers will be taking a 6-month trade training course and will be making $15 driving around town doing robot repair and maintenance...

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[sjames]

Do you really think the device and pharmaceutical companies sell at a loss around the world? If they weren't turning a profit in Europe, they'd just stop selling there.

They're soaking Americans exactly because they can.

But even if we accept your premise, the economically rational thing for the U.S. to do is to implement universal single payer healthcare as well so that we would only be paying our own share of the cost rather than paying everyone else's as well.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[pnutjam]

Ahh.. The wonderful mythical days of yore...

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[sjames]

The correct measure in the U.S. is taxes plus health insurance premiums plus healthcare copays. (don't forget that employers paying the insurance premiums counts too since they count that as part of the cost of employing you).

If you add all that up, Americans are paying more.

The healthcare industry is laughing at you behind your back for demanding to pay double. No rational economic actor would do that.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[sjames]

Funny thing about that. They blame the increased minimum wage for that, but they're also putting in the kiosks in in areas that didn't raise the minimum wage at all.

Don't let them fool you.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[cayenne8]

don't forget that employers paying the insurance premiums counts too since they count that as part of the cost of employing you)

Well, that's one problem there, the employers should NOT be in the business of providing healthcare coverage to employees. This is a relatively 'new' thing....years back when competing for employees employers started using this as enticement for prospective employees, and it some how turned into the 'norm'.

Let the employees get that money as more salary and allow them more freedom for HSA's (Health Savings Accounts) which allow you to sock this money away pre-tax, and unlike FSA's...it isn't use it or lose it annually.

Then, folks could shop around with their medical $$'s...and buy insurance that suited their needs pre-tax.

And this would cut out yet one more middle man, the employer.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Bengie]

fast food workers because they are stupid enough to think they deserve $15.00 for flipping burgers

It doesn't matter how much you think you should get paid for doing something, if I'm doing anything, I need to get paid a certain amount just to live. The burger joint could just not pay $15/hour and instead just pay $5/hour and see what happens. Ohh, no burgers to sell, now you're out of business. Well then, flipping burgers must be worth $15/hour.

The idea of "worth" is extremely abstract and not intrinsic.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[cayenne8]

Ahh.. The wonderful mythical days of yore...

Not mythical at all...I lived during the late 60-'s through the late 70's...maybe even somewhat into the 80's when this held true.

HMO's were the start of the evil that drove health care costs up....bean counters.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[djinn6]

The amount of government assistance is about the same (efficiency gain of fewer people), but the company saves money and one person if freed from the system

The overall economy grows.

How does the company save money? They're paying the same amount, but get less work in return. The value that is produced by one person being paid $15 / hr is significantly less than 3 people being paid $5 / hr. That's not growing the economy at all.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[sjames]

Even if employers just hand the money over as salary, the point remains, taxes + health insurance + copays in the U.S. are more expensive than taxes in Europe (which include better health insurance than you can buy in the U.S.).

It also remains irrational to demand that the situation not change in the U.S.

Your entire post is nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Chelloveck]

The same could be said about self-checkout lanes in supermarkets, and they seem to be here to stay. Some people actually claim to prefer them to human cashiers, though I really don't know why.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agriculture

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[apoc.famine]

I know, right? There's no tomato picking machines, apple picking machines, blueberry picking machines, or raspberry picking machines, AND THERE NEVER WILL BE!!!

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Curunir_wolf]

That *might* apply to drugs and devices, but the vast majority of the cost of health care is doctors' & nurses' salaries, real estate, and facilities. None of those are things that are made cheaper abroad by being overpriced in the US.

And that, folks, demonstrates just how effective the pharmaceutical industry is at lobbying and promoting propaganda!

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Great time to get into robotics. Learn to repair servos and hydrolics and make $50 hour in a few years.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on how you define efficiency. If it's output per hour, then higher pay doesn't change that. If it's total cost per unit output, doubling pay does not halve efficiency, as there are many other costs that a business has, per unit of production.

If pay doubled, then there might be an incentive to examine automation, but there is also a lot of risk involved, and so few want to be early adopters.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[cayenne8]

Even if employers just hand the money over as salary, the point remains, taxes + health insurance + copays in the U.S. are more expensive than taxes in Europe (which include better health insurance than you can buy in the U.S.).

It also remains irrational to demand that the situation not change in the U.S.

All I know is that it worked pretty well without super inflated costs just a few decades back, before the bean counters took charge.

Insurance should be nothing more than what used to be termed "major medical" for emergencies (i.e. hit by a bus or heart attack, etc)....and routine care saved for and paid for by the individual, just like you save for and pay utilities....

Again, then costs would come back down and responsibility back with the individual person.

The medicaid safety net would still be there for the truly poor and invalid.

No need for the hugely inefficient federal and then state bureaucracies to get involved and increase cost and inefficiency.

I do not believe nor trust the Federal govt to make my health decisions, nor pay for them.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

The immediate threat to labor isn't automation. It's immigration of both the illegal (low-skill) and visa (mid-skill) kind. Illegal immigration is impacting lawn care, food service, and construction industries. Visa workers affect IT, welders(!), pharmacy workers (!!), and others.

Most of our elected officials didn't want to deal with immigration, I doubt they'll do anything about automation.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[sjames]

That hasn't worked since the '70s when HMOs came into existence, supposedly to curb rising healthcare costs. They chose to pay for regular checkups and other routine care in order to avoid expensive major medical events. It was a market based "solution" to the already rising cost of major medical.

Clearly, the market was wrong. If fear of regulation hadn't paralyzed us for decades, perhaps healthcare wouldn't be such a disease ridden swamp today. At this point, I doubt the industry even knows how to operate in a reasonable manner. Half measures just won't do the job anymore. We have an industry that doesn't even understand the concept of prompt billing, accurate accounting, or even timely notification. The private bureaucracy is already so inefficient that the government bureaucracy actually looks pretty good.

The rest of the first world is doing much better with their single payer systems. Are you saying Americans are uniquely incompetent?

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[cayenne8]

That hasn't worked since the '70s when HMOs came into existence, supposedly to curb rising healthcare costs.

That's my point exactly....we should GO BACK to what was working in the 70's and before.

IT was a good system, and didn't require the federal and state governments to be involved with our healthcare.

If it worked then, why could it not work NOW?

Get rid of the HMO's and everything like them in place and go back to what it was before.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Citizen of Earth]

No problem, they'll just raise the new minimum wage to $20/hr!

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[steveha]

It doesn't matter how much you think you should get paid for doing something, if I'm doing anything, I need to get paid a certain amount just to live.

True, but that amount varies depending on your situation. If you are a teen living at your parent's house, you don't need as much as someone trying to support a family and pay a mortgage.

It doesn't make sense to declare that every job must pay a "living wage" because not every worker needs a "living wage". There is such a thing as a "starter" job, a job that has very low skill threshold needed and thus very low barriers to entry, but pays very little. The starter job is the first rung on the ladder of success. Rational workers might very well accept a $5 per hour starter job but would not stay at that job their whole lives.

The burger joint could just not pay $15/hour and instead just pay $5/hour and see what happens. Ohh, no burgers to sell, now you're out of business. Well then, flipping burgers must be worth $15/hour.

I agree completely with this sentiment, although I reach the opposite conclusion that you reached. If a place tries to pay too little, workers will not want to work there. The place will be forced to raise wages until people are willing to take the jobs. If $5 per hour is truly not enough, the place will be forced to offer more.

But the "Fight for Fifteen" movement is trying to force a $15 per hour minimum wage across the board, onto businesses that have historically not had any trouble filling their positions at an hourly rate of less than $15 per hour. Using your thought experiment, flipping burgers must not be worth $15 per hour, since free market competition doesn't produce salaries at that level naturally.

There is a natural equilibrium wage for a given industry in a given area. Offer too little, nobody will work for you. Offer too much, and you don't make enough profit and you are forced to shut down your business.

If the minimum wage is set below the natural equilibrium wage, it has no effect; people will be paid more than that naturally.

If the minimum wage is somehow set to exactly equal to the natural equilibrium wage, it will have no effect.

If the minimum wage is set above the natural equilibrium wage, it will have multiple effects that on the whole are not good. Fewer people will be hired for jobs; the employers are more likely to pile extra work onto those fewer people; and the employers are incented to try to find ways to replace the workers. The worst thing is drying up the pool of starter jobs... if there are fewer jobs, and the jobs have a forced high salaries, employers are incented not to take chances; they will hire the best candidates they can get, and not very many of those. This is hardest on the people who really need a job. It's called "sawing off the bottom rungs of the ladder of success". It's why, IMHO, if you truly want what is best for disadvantaged people, you should not raise the minimum wage.

Good workers will get more money. If an employer is a jerk and won't give raises to his good workers, then those workers can switch jobs and get more money somewhere else. (It's always easier to get a job when you already have a job.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwcHRyvrNCE

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

The same could be said about self-checkout lanes in supermarkets, and they seem to be here to stay. Some people actually claim to prefer them to human cashiers, though I really don't know why.

My supermarket recently removed some of them and I'm annoyed as the human cashiers they hire these days not only tend to be slower but can't bag worth a damn, especially when you bring those reusable bags that you're encouraged to use. Unless you watch them and intervene you'll get a few reusable bags that are 1/3 full and a dozen plastic bags with the rest of your groceries in them.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[sjames]

The market came up with HMOs because the cost of major medical was rising fast. So to go back to what was working, we must first implement price controls to make major medical work again.

In other words, government control. But, with something like health care, we can't afford any gaps where prices are left out of control, the toll of that can be measured in actual lives lost. So step one is to curb the cost of major medical events. Next make uninsured general health care costs no more than an HMO. Then expand medicare/medicaid so everyone can afford that cost. Then ban HMOs. Somewhere in there we must mandate sane billing practices.

With all of that, the federal government will probably have to at least hold the possibility of single payer over the heads of insurance companies to make the premiums actually drop to match the reduced cost of major medical events. Without that threat, they'll just pocket the savings from the cost control.

A market approach just won't work otherwise. We tried letting the market solve the problem and the market promptly screwed the pooch.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not saying we'll get to 'I robot' -level even within my lifespan as someone who's soon 28, but we don't need to get that far for most non-university educated people to have trouble finding work when most of these menial tasks are automated, which will lead to major issues unless we're prepared.

As someone who's also nearing 28, that time is fast approaching. It's not a matter of the number of tasks automated, so much as it is what tasks are automated. Most menial labor, a.k.a service industry, is very easily automatable. The main thing that prevents it from getting production ready is obstacle navigation, path finding, and recovery of mobility. Throw a bunch of garbage on the floor and the bot stops being able to work without human intervention. That's the only thing that prevents practically every major retailer, restaurant, and warehousing company from replacing most of their jobs with bots. As for the "service with a smile" thing, that will be replaced with whatever the company deems worthy, if it gets kept at all.

The next one would be trucking. This industry's jobs are under attack from both ends. The long haul in the form of automated driving, and the last mile in the form of drone deliveries. Eliminating these jobs would not only put those employees out of work, but also the workers of their dependent industries. Truck stops, interstate gas stations, wearhouses, restaurants, fast food, etc. Basically any of the creature comforts you find along the highway would start to disappear over time, due to the decreasing number of patrons. Worse some outlying communities would cease to exist, or be severely threatened due to the disappearing businesses.

This may not be a lot, but it will fundamentally change how low skilled people can get money to sustain themselves, and how we view society. With many bots running around making big bucks for faceless corporations, while so many of our low skilled people are out of work and growing more desperate, I'd imagine everyone's view of society will start getting pretty stark in the near future.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

$100/year with $1 bread is "better". Less zeros to count and less syllables to pronounce when conducting transactions.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[aberglas]

No. You need to feed your slaves.

Incidentally, Australian minimum wage is US$13.78 with health care. No huge unemployment.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Charcharodon]

Lol

A lot of the really old Sci-Fi was about that. Brave New World you were either an Engineer or you were on welfare (UBI).

People on UBI had about as many rights as the typical house pet. In other words none.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[geekmux]

When 20 - 30% of the human population is unemployable 10 - 20 years from now due to automation, there will be a considerable disruption to global economies.

This won't happen. We automated farming, we automated manufacture, we automated IT. Everything you use today used to take hundreds or thousands of times as many human labor hours to provide. That's right: we've eliminated 99.999% of all jobs in the past two centuries.

Yes, we've eliminated a lot of jobs, but we've also been rather busy creating a metric fuckton of jobs to replace those 99.999% of jobs. The advent of the internet alone created and sustains millions of jobs. But all of that is irrelevant going forward. My main point is the next generation of progress will make many humans unemployable. We've advanced ourselves a lot in the last few hundred years, but mental capacity is not really one of them. There are simpletons doing boring, simple jobs today just as there were 100 years ago. Those who choose to make a career out of a simple job usually do so because they have to. There is no "go get an education" option for them. Little Johnny Halfwit grew up and didn't get any smarter, and there's not a damn thing he can do other than a simple job. And there's a LOT of Johnny Halfwits out there. The simple jobs ARE going to be the ones attacked by automation first. And you will not pace Greed. The instant people started demanding a $15 minimum wage, corporations started investing in automation instead. Greed only cares about the bottom line, and usually cannot see any farther than the next few fiscal quarters.

On top of that, what jobs do intelligent people hold as they start climbing the proverbial ladder of success? What job helped pay your way through college? That's right, it was likely a simple job. Waitresses, cashiers, warehouse stockers, delivery drivers, etc. Cashiers alone comprise millions of jobs. And when you can replace the need for a cashier AND the cash register with an app (e.g. Sams Club Scan and Go), Greed starts looking at automation as the investment it truly is, impact to human employment be damned. Remove the simple jobs, and you start removing all people's ability to climb the ladder of success.

The only problem is progress causes transitional unemployment. Too much at once--too fast for your economy to shift demand and drive new supply, thus reallocating labor to new jobs--causes a pile-up of unemployment. If it's paced correctly, progress is limitless in the sense that it never results in permanent increases in unemployment.

Look at history, and you'll see we went through many painful transitions. The future is not hard to predict, and our economy is highly dependent on stability. Even a doubling of the unemployment rate would likely cause a considerable impact. As I said before, this next iteration of progress is different because it will make humans unemployable. And looking to tax the rich in order to create and fund some kind of UBI will also be predictable; we can't get the rich to pay taxes even today.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[pnutjam]

Sure, it's un-possible that some previous time when you were younger, more optimistic, and less scared would loom in your memory as greater then it was. Got it.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[bluefoxlucid]

this next iteration of progress is different because it will make humans unemployable.

It won't. It will do the same thing that every iteration of technology in history has done. You're focusing on "hey a position to do X is no longer a job people do" and not on the macro-economy of "hey it still takes SOME human labor to make anything, and consumers keep buying more whenever they can spend more, so the demand for human labor goes up".

Humans will remain employable until 100% of all production scales infinitely with absolutely zero additional human labor.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[DaveV1.0]

It is funny that my comment is modded as troll but this is literally the first step in replacing fast food workers with robots. It will be, like the automation of so many manual tasks, an iterative process where more and more parts of the job are incorporated. V1 is flipping burgers. V2 will be adding spices and cheese. V3 will put it on the bottom bun. V4 will put on toppings and the top bun.

Re: How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know who you are trying to fool but you got the wrong forum. People in here are generally interested in numbers and understand what they mean. I don't even bother to find you references for why your claim is incorrect because you are obviously a troll. I sent this message to you only to save your time in the future so you better be grateful to me.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[geekmux]

this next iteration of progress is different because it will make humans unemployable.

It won't. It will do the same thing that every iteration of technology in history has done. You're focusing on "hey a position to do X is no longer a job people do" and not on the macro-economy of "hey it still takes SOME human labor to make anything, and consumers keep buying more whenever they can spend more, so the demand for human labor goes up".

Humans will remain employable until 100% of all production scales infinitely with absolutely zero additional human labor.

I'm not focused or even concerned about reaching the 100% goal. My point is it won't even take but 10 - 20% of the workforce becoming unemployable to create a massive impact on society and economic stability. And that percentage is a rather easy number to reach as much as we're seeing automation continue to evolve. Again, mental capacity is not something that has improved drastically, which means there are millions and millions of humans who will not easily find the kind of work they are capable of doing as simplistic jobs are permanently replaced by automation.

And keeping humans employed in order to maintain demand does not represent reality either. Greed doesn't care about human employment. Greed cares about the bottom line. The gig economy is a good example of this as a lot of people struggle to find full-time employment.

Re: How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[jakob.stengard]

And the economists supporting these initiatives doesnâ(TM)t understand anything about WHO is actually paying their wages. What will happen the day noone can afford to pay for anything anymore? Prices will just drop through the floor with increased automation. And this will mean, a lot of companies will go out of business, because we will have over production. Just look at thr shipping industry for natural gas. A few years ago, prices were high, but now they have stagnated to a point were most companies does not make any proffit at all? And why? Because too many ships were built.

Re:How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

[bluefoxlucid]

I'm not focused or even concerned about reaching the 100% goal. My point is it won't even take but 10 - 20% of the workforce becoming unemployable to create a massive impact on society and economic stability.

You won't make even 0.01% of the workforce unemployable until you make 100% of all forms of production scale with zero human labor.

If some good X gets cheaper, that's because the jobs required to scale are diminished. There are still jobs required to produce that thing until the cost is zero. Even if that good X hits a zero cost, it only opens up the capacity to buy other goods. So either humans buy more of good X, causing replacement employment (e.g. you need 10% as many workers, but consumers buy 10x more, so you need 100% as many human workers in total); or they buy some other good not X, causing replacement employment (that good scales up as far as consumer spending power reaches, which is just a diversion of wage no longer required to produce good X).

Until more production ceases to mean more jobs, employment will always gravitate toward a minimum unemployment rate. The way the US economy runs now, that rate is about 5%; in full-employment economies, it's theorized to be 2%-3%.

keeping humans employed in order to maintain demand does not represent reality either

You don't do that. What happens is people want to buy 100,000,000 of a thing, but you only have capacity to make 50,000,000; you have to buy more machines (which involve human labor to produce), maintain them (which involves human labor), and operate them (which also involves human labor). It's impossible at that precise moment to sell 100,000,000 of that thing without the economy in total employing more human labor.

Technology cuts back the number of laborers required to produce 50,000,000 or 100,000,000. That reduces costs, which allows remaining consumers to apply demand they previously couldn't (effective demand). That creates new jobs--if you want to maximize profit, anyway.

Strange solution

[religionofpeas]

Using a general purpose assembly robot to flip burgers at a normal grill seems like a poor solution. Why not use a conveyor oven ? Or a two sided contact grill for one or two patties.

Re:Strange solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, I'm sure any (good) industrial engineer could come up with a robot design that would take in ground meat and electricity, and would spit out perfectly grilled patties on demand.

This is interesting from an AI standpoint, but technically sub-optimal.

Re:Strange solution

[Anonymous Coward]

And at 60k minimum, a poor and costly solution. How many years does it take to pay itself, including maintenance?

It seems more of a PR stunt than a sound business decision.

Re:Strange solution

[Spy Handler]

It's not a general purpose robot! All it can do is flip burger patties already sitting on a grill. It can't even put cheese on top of the patty, that has to be done by a human.

Why not use a conveyor oven ?

Because nobody wants a baked hamburger.

Or a two sided contact grill for one or two patties

That would actually make sense if I were building a burger factory to churn out ten thousand patties a day. That's how I'd do it.

However this is just one restaurant and it's probably making only a few hundred patties a day. You wouldn't want to spend too much money on a whole new automated grill system. This particular robot only costs 60 grand (relatively cheap) and it leverages the existing grill.

Re:Strange solution

[gweihir]

That is a question of cost, space, numbers and equipment that is already there. Sure, if there was a market for 100'000 of these per year, they would probably come as a complete replacement for the cooking station. But there is not. So a general-purpose tool gets adapted. Also, this is the first iteration, optimization will be done when it is known how large the market is.

Re:Strange solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably less than 2. You'd be looking at around 50k a year for a grill cook for 12 hours a day six days a week at a reasonable $12.50 per hour. It would probably be more after SS, Medicare and other benefits.

So, maybe if you're in middle of nowhere US with low hourly rates, it might take 3 years.

Re:Strange solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, I'm sure any (good) industrial engineer could come up with a robot design that would take in ground meat and electricity, and would spit out perfectly grilled patties on demand.

Why even bother with a grill? Load up the Meat Nuke 3000 hopper with a dozen cases of frozen patties and microwave away.

This is interesting from an AI standpoint, but technically sub-optimal.

A 10-year old kid can be trained to flip a burger. This is automation programmed with temperature parameters. That's not exactly "learning".

Re:Strange solution

[Anonymous Coward]

> Because nobody wants a baked hamburger.

I do. But that's beside the point. It's probably possible to lower a heated element from above and cook one side, flip it (in place or to another "unit/section"), and heat the other side.

But the real question is: can it grill the bun?

Re:Strange solution

[p0p0]

Novelty. People also might not like the assembly line look of a burger conveyor, ironic considering it's also an assembly line tool that does the flipping.

Re:Strange solution

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Because nobody wants a baked hamburger.

At a fast food joint . . . would anybody be able to taste the difference . . . ? Or even care . . . ?

Although, alternatively, they could claim that robot baked burgers are healthier than human greasy fried ones.

That would actually make sense if I were building a burger factory to churn out ten thousand patties a day.

Ha! I gaze in pity at your puny production! The sign outside my fast food restaurant says "Billions and Billions Served"!

Re:Strange solution

[StikyPad]

Doesn't Burger King use conveyors? All chain pizza places do (to the best of my knowledge).

Re:Strange solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha! I gaze in pity at your puny production! The sign outside my fast food restaurant says "Billions and Billions Served"!

He's talking about hamburgers, not cardboard.

Re:Strange solution

[arth1]

But you need a human anyhow, to place the patties on the grill, take them off, carry the box of patties from the truck to the cooler, from the cooler to the cooking station, discard old boxes, oil and clean the grill plate, and now also give daily maintenance to the burger flipping machine (or likely even more often for the spatula equivalents, if hygiene is a concern).
And you will still get the odd order of a double-cooked burger, which the robot can't handle. You then have a choice between telling the customer to go pound sand, or make her happy.

Re:Strange solution

[epine]

However this is just one restaurant and it's probably making only a few hundred patties a day.

That makes no sense. 100 burgers a day for three years is 100,000 burgers served. Once you load NPV onto TCO, you're adding near $1 per burger just to cook the patty.

I can see the ROI kicking in at the 500 burger per day range, but they've probably started at locations closer to 1000 burgers per day (circa 100 burgers per hour, with a steady service window of 10 hours).

Re:Strange solution

[mjwx]

The human labour intensive component of making burgers is the assembly. As yet we don't have an effective automated method of putting on salad or condiments. So even stores that use conveyor grills (or robots) will still require staff to make the burgers.

However I see this specific experiment doomed to failure because Flippy sounds too much like Clippy (but the publicity will be worth it, I've never heard of CaliBurger).

Re:Strange solution

[DaMattster]

Using a general purpose assembly robot to flip burgers at a normal grill seems like a poor solution. Why not use a conveyor oven ? Or a two sided contact grill for one or two patties.

This is actually what Burger King does. They stick the patties on a conveyor belt that goes through a flame broiler and comes out the other side. You don't need a whole lot of technology to automate burger making.

Re:Strange solution

[aaarrrgggh]

There is a french fry machine for restaurants (something like "perfect fries") that is a self-contained system that pops out either a single serving of fries or a batch of several servings that is closer to the GGP's comment; it doesn't take making thousands of burgers a day-- just being optimized for what it does need to do.

Likewise, automated drink machines hardly seem like a challenge for anything from the drive-through at McDonalds to Starbucks-- they might not be able to do everything, but triage of the easiest-to-automate tasks (or highest contact time, or lowest margin) hardly seems like rocket science.

Re:Strange solution

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right bitch, they do.

Re:Strange solution

[Provocateur]

A 10-year old kid can be trained to flip a burger.

Now why must the robot be equipped with 2 hands? I agree with your sentiment about 10 year olds doing the same thing.
 
Don't take away the human if you're technically replacing him. Might as well put an H1B hopeful in there. Add an extra arm, or something, so the robot can do Facebook! or post memes on imgur =)

Re:Strange solution

[bluefoxlucid]

Marketing sold some fool a bunch of bullshit.

Re:Strange solution

[Anonymous Coward]

You wouldn't want to spend too much money on a whole new automated grill system. This particular robot only costs 60 grand (relatively cheap) and it leverages the existing grill.

Well, I guess a new automated grill system would make much more sense in the long run, chances are it will do it more efficiently and could be designed to handle toppings as well.

This whole "flipping burger robot" sounds like a shoehorned solution to make some managers look smart.

Re:Strange solution

[MaryannG]

Because replacing the cooking method for the primary item on your menu costs substantially more than $60K? Consider for a moment the only change they're making is replacing a person with a machine that imitates the action the person should be doing. That's it. In this case, Caliburger is open 72 hours per week. The general trend of late is for people to demand $15/hr for this type of labor (I disagree with this but that's a personal opinion). The math here is simple. Flippy works the 72 hours per week that they're open replacing one employee (possibly more than 1 but let's be generous and assume just 1). Flippy costs $60K, Employee hours at $15/hr costs the employer $17.32/hr when you add the FICA and Cali's state payroll employer contribution. That means that Flippy's $60K cost is roughly paid for in 3464 employee cost hours...or 48 weeks and 1 day. I say roughly because Flippy is new tech, is working in harsh environment (grease, heat, abuse by the ignorant human workers, etc) and will have maintenance costs associated with it. Point is, on a simple cost benefit analysis, Flippy won't be calling in sick (he may break though), he won't be causing drama in the workplace, won't be spitting in the food, won't be stealing cash from the register but will be performing his tasks to a uniform perfection. The product will be the same or arguably better, certainly more consistent and, after 48 weeks of service, will be cheaper on the surface than the human employee option. What's interesting is how many people exclaim negatively about this development. This is just the tip of the iceberg too when it comes to reaction from demanding unrealistic wages for simple work. You can get your way today...but you just now priced your job into a category that is now plausibly doable by a machine. Vehicle assembly workers from the 1980's and 90's are wondering how some folks missed this memo. The good news is that with the burger flipper job dead and gone, the former burger flipper now has the opportunity to learn how to fix and maintain Flippy...until and unless he demands stupidly high wages for that in which case someone will build Flippy better and make him self maintaining.

Re:Strange solution

[Kierthos]

I'm trying to think of a burger joint around here that only does 100 burgers a day, and I'm drawing a blank.

I mean, sure, some place that has a large menu that also serves burgers (like IHOP or Cracker Barrel) might only do 100 burgers a day, but your typical Burger King or McDonald's or Wendy's?

Way more than 100 per day per location.

Re:Strange solution

[be951]

You don't need to replace a human worker 100%, though. If this machine handles 60-80% of the grill worker's tasks/time, you can combine that worker's job with another one that is at less than 100% utilization, and you've potentially replaced one worker for multiple shifts per day. And I'm not sure what the GP was thinking, but I'm pretty sure you're not going to give the thing Sundays off when you're implementing it as a labor-reducing tool.

As it is, though, this seems to be mainly a combination proof-of-concept and publicity stunt. Perhaps also a bit of demonstration (to workers, shareholders, both?) that management is willing and able to replace tasks/labor hours with automation. And of course data gathering, both to see how such a unit performs in a working kitchen vs a lab and to bulk up the amount of data the machine learning piece is using, which may lead to additional functionality.

Re:Strange solution

[arth1]

You don't need to replace a human worker 100%, though. If this machine handles 60-80% of the grill worker's tasks/time, you can combine that worker's job with another one that is at less than 100% utilization, and you've potentially replaced one worker for multiple shifts per day.

Only if the other task can be done in the time between him putting fresh patties on the grill and taking cooked ones off. He can't really delay the latter because he's doing something else, or people will eat overcooked burgers, and won't come back.

I can see how it could enable a charmaster of bovinity to cook twice as many burgers in the same time, so a busy place might replace one of two people with a machine. But you still need someone who can pay attention and rescue the burgers quickly when the machine says they're done.

Re:Strange solution

[Mr. Droopy Drawers]

Isn't a conveyor what Burger King has been using for > 40 years now? It's "flame grilled" too. So, it's not "baked". Seems that McD's is just catching up with competition here.

Re:Strange solution

[sconeu]

Carl's had conveyors in the late '70s (speaking from work experience)

Re:Strange solution

[Socguy]

I think people are missing the point that automation technology is continually advancing. Sure flippy today requires someone to place the burgers etc. but tomorrow the robot has now taken over salting and next year it's placing the burgers... then assembling the burgers... time goes by... now it's handling the payments as well...

A decade from now it's not unreasonable to assume there will be joints where the human employees visit only sporadically when there is a problem. 2 decades from now it's anyone's guess.

Re:Strange solution

[budgenator]

That's how Burger King cooks them.

Re:Strange solution

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a general purpose robot! All it can do is flip burger patties already sitting on a grill. It can't even put cheese on top of the patty, that has to be done by a human.

Why not use a conveyor oven ?

Because nobody wants a baked hamburger.

Portillo's has used a conveyer that charbroils their burgers for decades now, it works very well.

Re:Strange solution

[budgenator]

When I worked at Mc Donald's back in the 1970's I used to have 96 burgers cooking at a time when we were busy and never put on less than 24 when we weren't. Two grills would hold 48 patties each and they were about 3 steps away from each other. I probably cooked at least a thousand buggers in a 5 hr shift

Re:Strange solution

[be951]

Keep in mind that this is probably on the order of a 0.1 version. Will it still be as limited in 6-12 months? Like I said, it seems like it's more of a proof of concept, and very likely a data collection project at this point than an actual attempt at cost control.

He can't really delay the latter because he's doing something else, or people will eat overcooked burgers, and won't come back.

From my reading, the robot takes the patty off the grill when it is cooked to order, so while the system is pretty limited, it is not quite as trivial as you indicated. Though if it can't put it anywhere and get the next one when it is ready, it almost amounts to the same thing.

My expectation is that after some field testing, they add some upgrades so it can do more things. But I guess we'll see.

Re:Strange solution

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

I don't disagree with you on automation being good, but "demanding unrealistic wages" you mean a living wage (just barely). I hope you support basic income, because if all the people that are currently working multiple jobs (because sub $15 dollars an hour for a job that will keep you part time to avoid paying benefits is NOT livable in any real sense) is going to result in the kind of civil unrest that French Revolutions are made of, and that's not going to be good for any of is.

Re:Strange solution

[MaryannG]

Your assertion starts with a false assumption so I can't really engage any of it. The false assumption is that every job down the lowest skilled is supposed to provide a "living wage". They're not. There are jobs that are entry level for unskilled labor, new workers entering the workforce (read: "kids") and so on. The positions they're qualified to work aren't supposed to provide a "living wage". Therefore, when you start your premise on that basis, you're already off on the wrong path. And no, I do not support a basic income either. At least not in the sense in which I'm sure you're thinking of it. If a person is effectively going to cede their participating as a productive member of society and decide to become a net drain on that same society then, I'd suggest, they are no better than a ward of the state and, as such, are unqualified to receive the privileges of that society such as voting, driving, entering into contracts and so on. Essentially, if you've attained adulthood and find yourself no more use to society than someone judged incompetent, then you get to be adjudged to be equally incompetent and have no privileges other than your "basic income". Sorry, but the productive and contributing members of society should have a greater say in how that society functions than the ones whose totality of life decisions renders them incapable of functioning as an independent, self-supporting adult. Minus that, you've doomed a productive society to destruction under the weight of those who choose to do nothing to support themselves other than relentlessly and recklessly breed. Idiocracy come to full, vibrant life.

Re:Strange solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. And who will fix poor Flippy when he breaks down?

Owning flippy

[Anonymous Coward]

Suppose we could buy flippy for cheap, $5,000. Then we don't have to visit McDonald's for a burger. You can just tell the robot to cook your meal instead and save a ton of money.

Re:Owning flippy

[geekmux]

Suppose we could buy flippy for cheap, $5,000. Then we don't have to visit McDonald's for a burger. You can just tell the robot to cook your meal instead and save a ton of money.

A home solution? Give me a break. Talk about automation for automation's sake.

Suppose we could flip our own fucking burgers at home. Gee, what a novel idea.

SpongeBob...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is not going to be happy with this.

If it's greasy and dirty

[Begemot]

maybe we should better have a robot who eats this crap.

Re:If it's greasy and dirty

[Parker Lewis]

But greasy and dirty are the keys to the flavor of a good burger! :D

Heh, Flippy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey! It looks like you're making a burger!
Hey! It looks like you're making a burger!
Hey! It looks like you're making a burger!

Repost

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.google.com/search?q=flippy+burger+flipping+robot&client=opera&hs=nuX&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A2%2F28%2F2016%2Ccd_max%3A2%2F18%2F2018&tbm=

  https://www.engadget.com/2017/03/08/burger-flipping-robot-flippy/

This story isn't new!

Double-sided

[Ly4]

How is this an improvement over the double-sided grills that cook both sides at the same time?

Example: http://www.garland-group.com/P...

Re:Double-sided

[PolygamousRanchKid]

How is this an improvement over the double-sided grills that cook both sides at the same time?

Example: http://www.garland-group.com/P...

To use burger universe vernacular, the little old lady looks at that burger machine and barks, "Where's the hype . . . ?"

It isn't labeled "Autonomous AI Robotic Automation" and isn't "Powered by Bitcoin Blockchain Technology."

Hook it up to a Raspberry Pi that reads from /dev/random and prints it on a cheap display and add a coin slot labeled, "Insert Bitcoins Here", and then folks would get interested in it.

Re:Double-sided

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks. I worked on the electronics for the Garland Double Sided Griddle. Hadn't thought of it for a while. Simple reliable design with most of the issues during development being with certain metal components bending or twisting under torsion, which wouldn't have been a problem but the behavior was not specified. Validation was fun, lots of free lunches.

Re:Double-sided

[Anonymous Coward]

but... it's a robot! Wait till they put AI in to it and you'll be impressed.

It's just like "the cloud" where we are now paying for hosted servers/compute rather than having it on site because paying someone else for something is better than doing it yourself... somehow.

It's better because it has buzzwords in it, and that's all executives understand.

Maybe i need to make a Cloud-AI burger flipping robot, i'll be rich.

Re:Double-sided

[rhazz]

McDonald's had those when I worked there. I'd wager the difference is that this thing also independently monitors meat temperature and also removes them from the grill. I can see value in the temperature check alone.

One day when I worked at McDonald's, the meat hadn't been taken out of the deep freeze early enough and so the burgers weren't fully cooked after their preset cook time. They looked fully cooked on the outside (thanks to the double-sided grill press), but were quite raw in the middle even on the thin patties. We had a lot of complaints that day. Part of the problem is that the kitchen staff are not trained to cook burgers - they are trained to put frozen burgers on the grill, push a button, and take the burgers off when it dings. The managers occasionally verify the internal temperature, though I only witnessed that a couple times in a year of work.

Re:Double-sided

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that grill still needs an operator.

Cost

[Anonymous Coward]

Every story like this has a suspicious cost exactly like some kind of annual salary. Usually much higher than a human would be paid.

But if you look at what little the robot is actually capable of, your average hacker could build one that does the same for $2k or less. Turning it into a commercial product is of course hella more expensive until of course economies of supermassive scale kick in.

Side note: probably not the best time to be announcing this after that most recent X-Files episode...

McDonalds has not flipped burgers for decades

[GodWasAnAlien]

McDonalds transitioned to use a two sided "clamshell" grill several decades ago, so there has been no burger flipping for some time.

Also this robot is quite slow compared to a human.

Not a useful robot.

Perhaps customers like to see the robot flipping action.

Re:McDonalds has not flipped burgers for decades

[Socguy]

Yes, there is a marketing aspect to this.

But don't forget, a robot that 1/10th the speed is still profitable if it's 1/100th the cost.

Please dont eat beef

[Anonymous Coward]

It's terrible for the environment, for the animals and for your health.

If you need to eat a hamburger eat a veggie or bean burger instead.

So who's doing the rest?

[bobstreo]

It's just flipping burgers. Will it make me a rare one if I ask for it?
Someone else is apparently putting the burgers on the grill, and cheese, and assembly of the burger.

Does the FDA have to approve kitchenbots, to ensure they're not using toxic fluids, non-sealed batteries, or lead based paint?

I know one thing for sure, there's probably some guy making $30 a day under the table, cleaning the grease dishes, and the robot.

Better burger robots than this out there

[DirkDaring]

All this does is flip the burger. There's already robots that cool and build the whole thing. How is this news? It's like showcasing a iPhone 6s as something new.

Re:Better burger robots than this out there

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like using a robot in a car to manually shift gears.

No, no, no....

[Anonymous Coward]

...it's a lot easier to justify an investment that pays off in one year than one which pays off in 3 to 5.

That's if you were comparing two machines or some other capital asset.

We're comparing humans vs. machines.

The machine won't call in sick. The machine won't over sleep. The machine won't run off to college or get deported or go to the bathroom.

The machine wont get tired and slow down.

One day, the McD's will be ALL automated and you drive up, order, swipe your card and get your food.

Re:No, no, no....

[arth1]

The machine won't call in sick.

Sure it will. It will almost certainly have a diagnostic panel, and almost certainly won't have even a three nines uptime guarantee.
Doctors of the expensive kind that make house calls have to give it regular check-ups.

Re:No, no, no....

[Anonymous Coward]

Those sound like metrics that translate really fast to a "restaffing" proposal.

Appealing metrics. That "expensive" in there didn't really work. Seriously, all you've done is make the scenario sound more real.

Geld verdienen mit Online Produkten

[Anonymous Coward]

Du möchtest langfristig Geld verdienen, weißt aber nicht wie es geht.
Du hast vom Online Marketing erfahren, weißt aber nicht, wie du das hinbekommen kannst.
Ich verrate dir hier mein Geheimnis: Ich vermarkte hier digitale Trading und digitale Online Produkte zum Geld verdienen über das Internet.
Du brauchst absolut keine Vorerfahrungen und auch keine Kenntnisse. Denn ich hatte sie auch nicht. Was du nur tun musst, klicke unten auf den Button und schau dir die digitalen Online Produkte erstmal an bzw. informiere dich über diese Online Produkte.
Ganz ehrlich: Ich bin seit 3 Jahren Online Marketer und verdiene täglich 1814€ nur von Online Marketing.
Ich vermarkte sehr viele digitale Trading Produkte mit denen jeder sein Geld mit Aktien traden will.
Zb vermarkte ich auch Klick-Tipp für E-Mail Marketing, damit du durch Fremde E-Mails Geld verdienst.
Es gibt vieles für dich.
Und das beste ist, es ist alles Kostenfrei.

Klicke auf den unteren Button und erfahre an meinen Erfahrungsberichten, wie du Non-Stop Geld verdienst

http://xn--fevzigrer-v9a.com/

Re:Geld verdienen mit Online Produkten

[nospam007]

"Du brauchst absolut keine Vorerfahrungen und auch keine Kenntnisse. Denn ich hatte sie auch nicht."

Kein Wunder, du bist ja auch dumm wie Brot.

Re:Geld verdienen mit Online Produkten

[Anonymous Coward]

Verpiss dich und hol dir einen richtigen Job.

Automation requires large unit volumes

[sjbe]

machines are across the board more efficient than human beings, even if the human beings make next to nothing.

Speaking as someone who makes these sorts of cost calculations almost daily such a blanket statement is completely untrue. Professionally I am a certified accountant and also an industrial engineer. I manage a small manufacturing company and have to make decisions on automation all the time. Whether a machine is more economically efficient depends on the specific situation. In particular it depends on the volume and value of what is being produced. Many seemingly simple tasks are actually quite hard to automate economically unless you are producing large quantities of the product.

Hell, China is leading the way in automation of production, and they're using it to replace workers that make around 10-15 bucks a day because the machines are simply more cost-efficient and reliable than human workers even at those wages.

That depends on what those Chinese workers are making. I've been to China and I assure you that there is no lack of work for their labor force. Once the unit volume of a product gets high enough, it makes sense to automate almost any process. Having lower labor costs simply means the required unit volume is higher but the calculation is the same. Foxconn can consider automating the assembly of iPhones because they make MILLIONS of them. But there are VAST numbers of things we need to make for which the cost of automation is prohibitive and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Turns out that humans are very flexible, easy to train, readily available, and (comparatively) inexpensive for many tasks both simple and complex. Automation will replace a lot of assembly work (and that is a good thing) but it is not going to replace it all.

Let me give you an example. On my production floor today we are building a wiring harness for a customer. We have a machine that can automate production of the wire leads that go into it. But for this machine to be economical it really needs a production run of about 500 pieces because of the setup time and tooling costs. But we are only making 30 of these harnesses. So for this product (and many others we make) it is provably cheaper to use people to manually make the wire leads. But even if we were making 50000 of these harnesses we STILL would need the people because the only thing the machine can do is make leads. It cannot do any of the hundreds of other tasks that go into making the product whereas I can train almost any human to do most of them and not have to pay $100K up front for a new machine to do each task. To fully automate this job would require unit volumes in the hundreds of thousands to millions. Point is that there is a LOT of headroom between making one unit and the number where automation starts to make sense for people to work in. And this isn't going to change no matter how much people worry about it.

The thing to realize is that we're fast approaching a point in which untrained or lowly trained human labor will become essentially worthless

Oh I wish that were actually true. My day job is running a company that does assembly work and we hire a fair amount of what could reasonably be called unskilled labor. For the unit volumes we produce (we make smaller quantities of a wide variety of products) there is no machine that could possibly economically replace these workers nor will there be one anytime soon.

There are several flaws in your argument.
1) Humans can be easily and quickly re-purposed to a different job. A burger flipping robot can just flip burgers and while it may be efficient at that task it is useless otherwise. To really replace a person you would need far more automation.
2) To replace a human who does more than one specialized task (and most do) you need a far more flexible set of automation which is not coincidentally FAR more expensive. Good luck asking the burger fli

Re:Automation requires large unit volumes

[bluefoxlucid]

I always just tell people that we're expanding the output of human labor, thus decreasing the cost (a big part of that machine's cost is labor, although for low-demand goods as such they might be taking a huge 30% profit margin). You gave a more-complete answer.

If anyone but the fringe UBI folks actually thought automation would kill jobs, I might need people like you on my campaign team.

Re:Automation requires large unit volumes

[Green Mountain Bot]

So, it seems like you disagree with his point about the value of human labor, but it seems that your reasons for disagreement support the contention that an increase in minimum wage is not causing producers to utilize automation where they otherwise would not. His argument is that machines are better for reasons other than cost, so an increase in the cost of labor doesn't change the economics of hiring vs automation, whereas your argument is that humans are capable of doing low-skill tasks that machines are unable to do, so an increase in labor costs doesn't change the mechanics of human vs machine.

Re:Automation requires large unit volumes

[Anonymous Coward]

With some re-engineering of products to design for automation and more versatile machines, most such small companies will be out of business.

Re:Automation requires large unit volumes

[Kjella]

Oh I wish that were actually true. My day job is running a company that does assembly work and we hire a fair amount of what could reasonably be called unskilled labor. For the unit volumes we produce (we make smaller quantities of a wide variety of products) there is no machine that could possibly economically replace these workers nor will there be one anytime soon.

Obviously there will always be a phase of low-volume prototyping, so there will always be business for a company like that. But when you consider that we're 7-8 billion on this planet there's very few items we really need just thirty of. Maybe to my generation it's not that noticeable but my dad has from time to time commented on how amazingly cheap you can buy small electronics, power tools and such. It's almost always from China, probably part of some huge production run where they just thought "Well if we aggregate the whole global demand and undercut the competition with automation then we can sell a hundred thousand units and make it work." even if it's quite niche.

I'm probably stating the obvious to you, but if small production runs become relatively more expensive then we're going to try avoiding them with more computer simulations, VR, 3D printing, modular reuse so even though it can't take over the jobs it can take away the jobs. Particularly that it might be cheaper to just do overkill than designing one bespoke solution for every variation, even if technically it would have been cheaper in large volume. I have some stories from friends in the construction industry about bespoke, place-built work vs pre-made assembly-line modules, that humans are better at the former doesn't necessarily make it the future...

meaty flaps 2: the search for more money

[Anonymous Coward]

if they don't weigh at least 400 pounds I just can't finish!

Am I to believe Spitting-in-mayo now extra?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if I have to pay more for that, I am just not going.

Seems inefficient

[Roodvlees]

Why would you go through the effort of making a robot arm to do this?
Seems to me you could bake these burgers in the same way bread is baked.
A conveyor belt that moves the burgers over the fire in a consistent way.

Re:Seems inefficient

[arth1]

Why would you go through the effort of making a robot arm to do this?
Seems to me you could bake these burgers in the same way bread is baked.
A conveyor belt that moves the burgers over the fire in a consistent way.

In that case, the customer might as well go to McDonalds or Burger King. That people go to CaliBurger is at least in part due to a perception that the burgers are cooked better.

What an impressively weak design

[LostMyBeaver]

1) Store burgers in a specially designed freezer that can be loaded and unloaded via robotics from a delivery vehicle.
2) The outside facing door opens and closes on robotic hinges.
3) Burgers are delivered on a carousel mail-slot system so that 8 stacks of 150 1cm thick burgers can be delivered directly from the truck to the restaurant. Make room for two of these stacks so that one can be empty and being replaced while the other is in use.
4) When a patty is needed, a door to the freezer is opened via robotics then a pushed from behind (with considerable force if necessary) onto a conveyor belt.
5) A metal chain conveyor belt then passes through an oven at the correct speed to cook the burger from above and below.
6) At the end of the conveyor, a similar mechanism has prepared the bun and toppings where the burger falls off the end of the grill into place.

For what a precision robotic arm costs, this solution would be similar. In addition, it should be possible to support automatic cleaning as well.

Fries are far easier to automate.

It should be possible to automate an entire fast food restaurant so that a single person can drive to 8 locations each day and perform checks and additional cleaning. Also it should be possible to completely automate the delivery, waste remove and pickup of empty food cartridges through outside accessible freezer designs. A single self-driving delivery truck could drive from warehouse to restaurant to restaurant resupplying and removing empties for 8 or more locations in a single shipment.

Replacing burger joint workers with robots is just a matter of initial investment. At $10 an employee, if it were to cost $100,000 to retrofit a restaurant with machinery to replace them, that would be 5 employees for a year. In reality, it would probably cost twice that. At which time it would be hard to justify. Of course, a company like McDonalds would have to foot the bill to handle that scale of development.

On the other hand, at $15 an hour, the ROI would be probably a year or less per restaurant. Certainly worth it.

Re:What an impressively weak design

[Anonymous Coward]

why not just skip all that and have the customers kill and eat their own cow

it's a better burger experience when you are drenched in the blood of the animal you are eating

Re:What an impressively weak design

[Isaac-Lew]

1) How much does that freezer cost?
2) How much do the new doors cost?
3) How much will it cost for that carousel system?
4) How much will that patty pusher cost?
5) How much will that chain conveyor cost (unless you're Burger King)?
6) How much will the condiment/bun mechanism cost?

In addition, there is maintenance needed (regular and emergency), they most likely have to be (securely) networked, and there has to be power for all of these systems. It's going to take longer than people think to get an ROI on fast-food automation.

oh boy

[Anonymous Coward]

Doughtnuts have been flipping themselves for generations.

smh

[Anonymous Coward]

The robot - will not calll in sick
the robot - will not need family vacation days
the robot will not need Obamacare
the robot will not need payroll taxes to be paid
the robot will not need ..... figure out what other federally /state mandated item to insert here.
at the end of the day - he probably is saving lots more than the 60k cost.

Re:smh

[kaatochacha]

you left out the part where he will not ever stop until you are dead.

You just wait until...

[adosch]

... the smart, AI-driven robot also figures that it's "not a fun job -- it's hot, it's greasy, it's dirty.", too. Going to have a robotic Sponge-bob hash slinging slasher on your hands.

Well, let's look at it:

[fyngyrz]

How's that $15/hr min wage working for you?

Priced yourself right out of a job, didn't you?

Let me show you how this works out:

Let's say a Caliburger grill cook - a burger flipper - makes $9/hr. This is what Caliburger pays for a "prep" position. It may be more than that; Caliburger pays up to $11/hr for a lead cashier, but we'll go with the lowball.

Caliburger is open from 11am to 10 pm, or a total of 11 hours a day. The fry cook position has to be paid all those hours - not to the same employee in order to avoid overtime, but still, all the hours are worked in that position, so this is a fair way to look at the costs.

That's $9 x 11 hours x 365 days, which is $36,135.00 gross salary costs. Now add the per-employee tax overhead, and you're pretty near $40,000.00 / year, not counting any other costs such as uniforms, cleaning uniforms, liability insurance, employee benefits if any, etc. But you know what? We won't even count the tax costs. So:

The robot costs $60,000.00 (minimum... I presume there are added-cost options, but for $60k you get your burger flipper replaced, so we'll just focus on that.)

Let's look at a 5-year cost comparison, which I am presuming is the lifespan of the robot. That's very conservative in terms of hardware, but let's assume that a much better model will be made available and purchased within 5 years.

o The robot costs $60k x 1 ... which is $60,000.00
o The employee costs $36,135.00 x 5, which is $180,675.00

This means that in 5 years, Caliburger saves somewhere in the range of $120,000.00 by moving this job from an employee to the robot.

This is at $9 per hour. Not $15 per hour.

Which I've shown here is that the assumption that a raise to $15 / hour is what will create the motivation for a business like Caliburger to utilize a robot like this is nonsense.

The motivation already exists at the lowest income levels Caliburger is already providing. Sure, there's an even better case to be made for a $15 / hour wage, but the point is, the case was already made.

So no, the $15 minimum wage has nothing to do with this at all.

1) Caliburger Salary Reference

2) Caliburger Hours Reference

Re:Well, let's look at it:

[gtall]

All it does is FLIP BURGERS. It requires a human to slap on the cheese, lettuce, etc. Then there is that nice white dinner jacket the robot arm is covered in that needs to be cleaned every day or the health inspector will get heart palpitations. And machines do not run forever without maintenance.

Put quickly, the robot arm is overkill for what its doing. It would be more efficient to have a moving line of top and bottom griddles, put the burger in between on the bottom, lower the top, and out the other end comes a grilled burger, and faster than only grilling one side at a time. Plus, you can probably automate the cheese food addition, and lettuce, and bun application. That would be overkill as you'd have to be selling a lot of burgers to make it cost efficient. Problem is, burger joints are everywhere, and cleaning that machine is going to be a lot harder than a griddle. Plus, you cannot ask it to take out the garbage.

Re:Well, let's look at it:

[bluefoxlucid]

It's faster. With a high minimum wage, the point at which the relative risk considerations and the ROI trigger a change in operations--and the rate of that change--for each individual business is sooner and faster.

This discussion is an economics one: will the high minimum wage damage our economy by creating unemployment? I argue for social safety nets because the economics argument is inherently non-humanitarian: if we shove too many poor people onto the street at once, the proles will make a lot of noise; if we do so slowly, we can avoid such criticism even as those same people each eventually face such suffering in turn. We need to take responsibility for each individual who is affected in the path of progress, not just for the economic metrics that generate overall sentiment.

That means we can push a higher minimum wage (or some other approach), but we need to also take steps for those who are impacted negatively by this policy.

Re:Well, let's look at it:

[budgenator]

A rule of thumb is a worker costs twice their salary, so your $9.00/hr worker is going to cost about $72K. I'd be surprised if anyone working fast-food ever worked an 11 hr day, that would be overtime in some places, more likely they'd work two shifts of 6 or 7hrs.

Re:Well, let's look at it:

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps minimum wage is not the "primary" incentive for automation, but its certainly one of many. Add to that healthcare costs, and the lower overhead/potential cost savings using a machine that costs much less per day than a human, and its almost a given. Minimum wage increases across the country are just the icing on the inevitably robotic cake.

Re:Well, let's look at it:

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct, but with a massive caveat. This robot in-particular does not add condiments. Another robot made by momentum machines for example, CAN in fact both cook the burgers AND add condiments, and even wrap and bag the burger! Therefore, the fact this low end model cannot, does not mean the proverbial robotic writing is not on the wall. Automation will inevitably continue and become more advanced, particularly where its cost effective, into the future. That, and theyve had robots that can take out garbage for years now.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/robots/a19615/volvo-is-testing-out-a-robotic-garbageman/

https://makezine.com/2016/02/25/take-out-the-trash-your-couch-with-an-rc-bin/

https://hellogiggles.com/lifestyle/someone-invented-a-trash-can-robot/

Re:Well, let's look at it:

[budgenator]

Taking out the garbage is now a management responsibility in the automated fast food industry.

Re:Well, let's look at it:

[Anonymous Coward]

It's faster

What, you mean it undercooks the burgers?

Re:Well, let's look at it:

[fyngyrz]

Wages aren't stopping robots. Capability is stopping robots. When that wall falls, the worker goes. It's not even a contest.

Re:Well, let's look at it:

[fyngyrz]

Plus, you cannot ask it to take out the garbage.

There's no plus about it, unless you believe tomorrow isn't coming. Eventually, it'll all be automated. The only thing stopping this is the lack of capability today.

The job availability in fast food joints is beginning to close. If you can't see that, you're simply not paying attention.

From the folks who brought us Clippy?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's baaaak, and staffs the kitchen at a FF joint.

Here's a crazy thought

[rsilvergun]

maybe there's something wrong with a society whose only answer to advancing technology that reduces the need for labor is lower wages and lower standard of livings.

Re:Here's a crazy thought

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect. No one "aspires" to work in fast food. Its known its a terrible and poor paying job. If you have a country with incredible opportunity and potential for upward mobility, and then limit yourself to fast food, you dont really get to complain. Society does not dictate how you spend your life or how you are employed. That is up to the individual and their level of personal responsibility.

At Least Back to the Early 70's

[DumbSwede]

My first job was at Burger King in 1974, and we had the conveyor belt broiler. Plop patties on the belt, they slid into a bin a few minutes later.

Burger King...

[sycodon]

...is wondering what all the fuss is about. All people do there is put the patty on the rotating chain and out comes a fully cooked burger from the other side.

Re:Burger King...

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet, BK burgers taste like rubbery shit... Fully cooked rubbery shit, sure, but still rubbery shit. No, thanks... I'll eat somewhere else.

Re:Burger King...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet somehow always tastes cold and soggy.

Re:Burger King...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's probably more to do with meat quality.

Also to GP, they microwave it after "charbroiling" it to finish it off (this may have changed, it's been over a decade since I was an employee in the industry.)

Re:Burger King...

[SeaFox]

Also to GP, they microwave it after "charbroiling" it to finish it off (this may have changed, it's been over a decade since I was an employee in the industry.)

Do you seriously think microwaving a burger for 11 seconds actually cooks the meat in some way? They may be higher wattage commercial-grade microwaves, but -- no.

The burgers exit the boiler fully cooked and are put on a bun and into a steam tray to help them stay warm during their holding period. The microwaving is just to boost the temperature after they are taken out, before being assembled into a final sandwich per order.

Source: Worked two years at Burger King back in high school.

Re:Burger King...

[SamTombs]

Do you seriously think microwaving a burger for 11 seconds actually cooks the meat in some way?

Yes.

The burgers exit the boiler fully cooked

What is "fully cooked"? Is a rare burger "fully cooked"? Or does it have to be medium? Or well?

The microwaving is just to boost the temperature after they are taken out,

Boosting the temperature boosts how done it is - doneness is a measure of temperature, not time. (That's why meat thermometers are bracketed into Rare/Medium/Well Done zones.)

Re: Burger King...

[jakob.stengard]

Oh, that is why burgerkingâ(TM)s burgers are actually decent. I see.

Re:Burger King...

[SeaFox]

The burgers exit the boiler fully cooked

What is "fully cooked"? Is a rare burger "fully cooked"? Or does it have to be medium? Or well?

Fully cooked as in well done. Because of the chance of E.coli infection and making the process as automated as possible, all burgers are cooked to remove all pink from them. This is standard practice at fast food restaurants because the product is cooked and already binned before the customer steps up to order. The burgers are cooked over a gas-fired boiler with a chain conveyor belt. There isn't any real practical way to cook burgers to-order on doneness this way -- they get dropped as frozen patties on one side, and emerge fully cooked as one of many on the other. You would have to place a single patty on the belt and manually increase the speed of the chain, or lower the temperature, while that one burger finished it's three-or-so minute journey to cook it any way other than standard.

The microwaving is just to boost the temperature after they are taken out,

Boosting the temperature boosts how done it is - doneness is a measure of temperature, not time. (That's why meat thermometers are bracketed into Rare/Medium/Well Done zones.)

Doneness is a measure of internal temperature when the burger is being removed from the cooking surface.

The burger is not being microwaved as soon as it exits the broiler, it's being zapped after it's taken out of the steam tray but before the dressing and condiments are applied. It's been sitting in the steam tray for up to several minutes since it was cooked and has lost most of its heat by this point. The peak temperature of the burger was when it dropped off the chain at the end of the broiling. The microwaving is not raising the meat's temperature above that -- so it is not cooking it any more thoroughly. Note: When the burger exits the boiler, you needed tongs to pick it up, but when preparing burgers the sandwich is picked up with your hands from the microwave.

Umm ... no

[drew_kime]

Right now, cheese and toppings are added by a co-worker .

What the actual fuck? No, this thing doesn't have co-workers.

Bad news

[nospam007]

All those English Majors not finding any job will now end 'putting' burgers instead of flipping them.

Burger king robot from start

[goombah99]

I cam heree to say the same thing. They also get flame broiling to boot. Some people prefer a non-broiled burger (jucier allgedly, but that's really more to do with the meat). But no reason one could not implement the same thing in a grill that was a chain driven burger sliding system.

I think the value of flippy is it can retro-fit an existing grill. But I doubt it costs less than just getting a flame broiler.

Re: Burger king robot from start

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the 'value' of Flippy is very much still up for debate. Once more with feeling: get out of California once in awhile, and go somewhere other than Washington state, Oregon, or New York.

Re: Burger king robot from start

[Anonymous Coward]

The value is very high! Just look at all the publicity they are getting. But make no mistake. This is purely a PR stunt.

Re:Burger king robot from start

[SamTombs]

But no reason one could not implement the same thing in a grill that was a chain driven burger sliding system.

Flippy does have one advantage - it uses infrared vision in order to judge when to flip and when to serve, meaning that variations in meat density or grill heat shouldn't matter.

So that WE humans can do more important stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one, am greenlighting this (not that anybody's asking) but none of the comments have mentioned the bright side.

The original carbon-based unit can leave the robot alone, so the former can

1_go online on FB and mix it up with friends and family and Russians. Post fake news if he so chooses.
2_Earn UBI(Universal Basic Income), then pursue his real boyhood dream of becoming an evil overlord, with robots as slaves.
3_Pit one robot against another, so that the human race can watchRobot Gladiator Deathmatches, complete with pre-game trash talk and post-game interviews.
4_Profit!

Didn't see that one coming, eh?

Re:So that WE humans can do more important stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

and
 
5.The humans will be kept working, on the healthier alternatives e.g. salads (Chicken Caesar, Russian Salad FFS, and
Everything-but-the-beef Salad Sandwich with fries as topping and laced with avocado. THIS is California, dammit!
 
6. Watch Caliburger overtake both McDonald's and Burger King.

Is it dangerous?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many have already pointed out that the equivalent thing could also be done with a much cheaper and simpler machine. But another point I haven't seen made: aren't these industrial style robots dangerous to be around? I would think a busy kitchen would be the wrong place for this type of thing. Or have these robot arms been made safe for humans to interact with?

min wage is $10.50-$11.00 now in ca (some citys h)

[Joe_Dragon]

min wage is $10.50-$11.00 now in ca (some citys higher)

Pathetic publicity trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Some burger chains have been using two sided timed grills for over 30 years. This is just attention whoring.

Gimmick

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems like a gimmick more than an efficiency or quality play. The fact that the robot is prominently displayed furthers this theory.

Re:Strange solution - generality, steps to future.

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

If you use an arm, they can use a standard cheap grill. For now, all it does it flip burgers, but either with a second arm, or with attachments on the primary arm, it could switch to do more tasks itself (adding cheese, and the top of the bun.) the arm is a good step along the way, where the moving bed doesn't give a step on the way to further automation.

Great news for the non-college bound

[rnturn]

You could get a rewarding job in a fast food "restaurant" as a "patty plopper". Do you have what it takes to keep up with Flippy?

Grill Assistant

[irbeginner]

It looks like you're flipping a burger! Would you like help with that?

Safety Cage

[Marc_Hawke]

How can a human put the stuff on the grill, or put the cheese on afterwards? Do they have to shut down the robot, enter the safety cage, exit the cage, turn on the robot. I don't see how you can do that with 'food' sitting on the grill.

The pictures in the article don't show any room. The human co-worker would have to slide up next to the robot, get smashed in the gut or the head by a heavy steel pneumatic arm, and then they wouldn't have to worry about their minimum wage job anymore.

Re:Safety Cage

[HornWumpus]

Safety cages are only required when you can't push the machine back by hand.

There are no safety cages on elevator doors (for example).

Re:Safety Cage

[Anonymous Coward]

How can a human put the stuff on the grill, or put the cheese on afterwards?

burger cannon and cheese rifle.

Re:Safety Cage

[kcwebmonkey]

If you watch the video it shows the worker alongside the robot arm putting cheese on the patties... the robot arm is not in the way.

Califburger

[kaatochacha]

Is essentially basic In-N-Out ripoff, Check out their menu and compare.
This is just a publicity stunt

The next step is to learn by example

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice, so the next step is put video cameras around the work place and record all the human actions within 2-3 months and then replace the human worker with robot hand. It is gonna be way more complicated than flipping burgers, but it will really make human workers obsolete once and forever.

The cameras can be lace around all work places of similar job type.

whoo hoo

[Anonymous Coward]

And when it breaks there's always the service tech to help at $450/hr

Breakeven analysis

[sjbe]

but it seems that your reasons for disagreement support the contention that an increase in minimum wage is not causing producers to utilize automation where they otherwise would not.

A higher minimum wage does have SOME effect on whether automation is economical but it generally isn't as big an effect as many would have you believe. For businesses like a restaurant, it is generally extremely difficult to automate substantial portions of the business. You can raise the minimum wage and the net effect isn't going to be automation but rather more people eating at home more often. Some restaurants may go out of business but most of them will simply raise prices and people are still going to buy their pizza and burgers. Some workers will be displaced but not as many as many fear.

A lot depends on how easy it is to automate a given task and who the competition is. For my company we are competing against Chinese labor already so raising our minimum wage would have a modest effect on our business because we already have to go after certain types of jobs where we aren't trying to squeeze every penny out as it is. We need more talented labor already and that already costs much more than minimum wage. It might cost us some jobs but it isn't going to radically alter the calculus for us. We don't compete on the large volume jobs but instead smaller volume higher complexity jobs that are difficult to automate and that are difficult to send overseas.

whereas your argument is that humans are capable of doing low-skill tasks that machines are unable to do, so an increase in labor costs doesn't change the mechanics of human vs machine.

It's not just low skill tasks. High skill too. But changing the labor rate just changes where the tipping point is in the human vs robot decision. The lower labor costs are the higher the unit volumes have to be to justify the capital expense of automating. The equation is the same, just with slightly different inputs. As automation for a particular task becomes cheaper that also changes the equation but that tends to happen rather slowly or in step functions. Nobody is going to come out with a robot with human level intellect and flexibility for a long time if ever and even if they did it would cost a fortune. Specific tasks will be taken over by specialized automation but general purpose automation is a hugely difficult and expensive task. I have little worry that people aren't going to be able to find work within my lifetime.

I've been there..

[sconeu]

I've been to the Pasadena location... It's attached to a club that does rock concerts.

The burgers are meh. Only good thing about the restaurant is they will loan you a wireless charging ring for your phone while you're eating. Oh. And the shakes.

Arrogant Prick

[Joviex]

"It's not a fun job -- it's hot, it's greasy, it's dirty,"

Actually, its quite fun. Did it many years going through HS and College.

What is "not fun" are asshole CEOs who think they are above such 'jobs'.

X-files episode Rm9sbG93ZXJz

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol wonder if this burger flipper will get angry if you don't tip it.

Not $60K for long

[aberglas]

The price of robots is falling fast. They are made by other robots in China.

I would agree that a limited $60K robot is at best marginally economical. But what about when it only costs $20K in a few years time. And has enough smarts to detect and resolve simple problems. And the order taking is automated. And there is another robot to assemble the burgers and hand them to the customers.

Not tomorrow. But in ten years time the world will be very different.

Tomorrows Robots

[aberglas]

SJBE you make a good analysis of today's dumb robots. But as they slowly become more intelligent this will change. They will take less effort to set up, and they will be able to work in less structured environments.

How much and when is unknown. But it would be interesting to hear your perspective on this.

As to minimum wage, there have been many studies to show that they do not affect employment much. Business that worry how they would pay extra wages forget that their competitors also would need to pay them.

(Australian minimum wage is AU$17.70/hour (US$13.78) (permanent), but most work is on awards greater than that. And includes the free health care of course. No huge unemployment.)

Re:Tomorrows Robots

[bingoUV]

Business that worry how they would pay extra wages forget that their competitors also would need to pay them.

This is not exactly true for many businesses. If a business makes and sells a product - the neighbouring state, country, continent where this latest minimum wage increase didn't happen is a competitor. They would not have to pay these extra wages. Same for services that can be rendered over the internet (some over the phone).

By increasing the minimum wage, a jurisdiction is effectively saying that our productivity is higher than that of other jurisdictions. Especially in the recent past. So we deserve to pay our workers better. This statement may or may not be true - and while increasing minimum wage the "leaders" of those jurisdictions rarely make this point. But this is the major point that is worth making.

Read again

[fyngyrz]

I'd be surprised if anyone working fast-food ever worked an 11 hr day, that would be overtime in some places, more likely they'd work two shifts of 6 or 7hrs.

You failed to understand: SOME worker making x$/hour works 11 hours a day there, because they are open 11 hours a day. Might be one, two, or four workers. Doesn't matter. The point is, the business pays for such a worker for all 11 hours. Or, they don't pay a robot per hour, just initial acquisition + maintenance. So that's the cost to the business for that position. Which is what you would reasonably compare to the cost of having a robot in that position.

A rule of thumb is a worker costs twice their salary, so your $9.00/hr worker is going to cost about $72K

That's not applicable here. A burger flipper adds a few k, no more, to costs, mostly via taxes, because they typically receive no benefits and they have few other costs. Even so, to whatever extent the cost is higher than the $/hour wage, it simply makes the point further.

and the surplus, unemployable people

[Anonymous Coward]

will be made into hamburgers. hakuna matata