Slashdot Mirror
'Flippy,' the Fast Food Robot, Turned Off For Being Too Slow (chicagotribune.com)
He was supposed to revolutionize a California fast food kitchen, churning out 150 burgers per hour without requiring a paycheck or benefits. But after a single day of working as a cook at a Caliburger location in Pasadena this week, Flippy the burger-flipping robot has stopped flipping. From a report: In some ways, Flippy was a victim of his own success. Inundated with customers eager to see the machine in action this week, Cali Group, which runs the fast food chain, quickly realized the robot couldn't keep up with the demand. They decided instead to retrain the restaurant staff to work more efficiently alongside Flippy, according to USA Today. Temporarily decommissioned, patrons encountered a sign Thursday noting that Flippy would be "cooking soon," the paper reported. "Mostly it's the timing," Anthony Lomelino, the Chief Technology Officer for Cali Group told the paper. "When you're in the back, working with people, you talk to each other. With Flippy, you kind of need to work around his schedule. Choreographing the movements of what you do, when and how you do it."
...not switched off fast enough to not show up here as a dupe.
LOL
"Mostly it's the timing," Anthony Lomelino, the Chief Technology Officer for Cali Group told the paper. "When you're in the back, working with people, you talk to each other. With Flippy, you kind of need to work around his schedule. Choreographing the movements of what you do, when and how you do it."
Yeah, that sounds like a great place to work. Take one of the only pleasant things about working at a fast food restaurant - socializing with your friends/coworkers - and then tell them to knock it off and just serve the robot.
Six months from now, they're going to have trouble hiring anyone.
#DeleteChrome
Say what you will about machines taking jobs, I'd rather have a machine make my food than a human. On more than one instance I've been at a fast food place, looked back in the food prep area, and saw someone give their nose a good scratch-pick in between putting on the lettuce and tomato. I'm not saying there's any malicious intent or anything, just that people are gross, particularly when they're rushed and not paid enough to care (or simply don't take cleanliness into much consideration themselves, which is quite a large number of people). More incentive for me to make my own food, but still, machines can't some soon enough as far as I'm concerned.
Loud disco music from the '70s to accompany Flippy's work.
People would've gone nuts.
"If I told you there were two guys, one named Flippy, and one named Hambone, and I asked you which one liked dophins the most, you'd probably say Flippy, wouldn't you? But you'd be wrong, because it's Hambone." -- Jack Handy
Speaking of morons, this article is about California. You know, a state thatâ(TM)s Democrat controlled? Yeah, I know, Iâ(TM)m talking to a brick wall
Really, How hard can it be to come up with a burger flipping robot? I'm actually sitting here thinking of a design that cooks the patty on both sides at the same time. No need to flip. I think a guy name Foreman was shilling a grill like it on tv the other night.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Just so you all know, Caliburger is a shit place. It's an overpriced version of In and Out. When we moved to California, we stopped at the Caliburger in Bakersfield and the fries are frozen like McDonalds and the burgers are tiny and mushy. We had driven in from the Mojave and we were hungry and it was really a disappointment.
There are much better burger places around here.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Flippy has a long, long way to go. 12 is the limit, but we simply had to go to 24 during lunch rushes to keep up. I was cooking 150 burgers in under 10 minutes.
Who would have thunk replacing a 1/10th? of a persons job wouldn't be very efficient. Slow and cheap might work but they didnt actually reduce any costs it appears.
Looked rather overhyped for what it did anyway!
A few people previously thought he was too slow. Probably some guy standing over him waiting to add cheese cussing at his pace.
"I see you're trying to flip a burger, would you like help with that?"
We'll make great pets
If this were at a Mexican Restaurant, would we call it a Mexi-Flip?
Moving past that, far beyond that, if it would be labeled as "mexi-flip" what would be the difference, other than consistency..
It's Still Garbage in, Still Garbage out, the difference being the robot got to shutdown and management actually had to think. If that were a human, I think the situation would be verry different..
Wonder whom got fired over this colossal blunder-fuck..
With that said, Whom do YOU think should be fired??
and dont say the Robot.. Please..
Let's take stock of your Fearless Leader Donald Trump: o Was continually Machoed Out by a little blonde girl (Megan Kelly)
..and you voted for this fucking loser. Really, you should just kill yourself, there's no recovering from this.
o Had to resort to personal attacks against other candidates (a sure sign of "no ammunition" and "low intelligence")
o Grabbing the genitals of random women WHILE MARRIED
o Fucking skeezy porn chicks WHILE MARRIED, and right after her HAVING HIS BABY
o Shit 'businessman', keeps going bankrupt to the point where no bank will loan him money (except the Russians, LOL)
o Is so dumb he actually falls for all the flattery the Russians laid on him since the 80's
o Is so dumb that now he's in the hip pocket of Russia and Putin
o Employs mainly criminals and idiots; the smart ones get tired of his shit and leave
o Is HATED more and more every single day, by even his own so-called 'core support'
o Will soon be indicted on criminal charges and very likely TREASON; enjoy your firing squad, Donnie
Suck it, millennial nerds that were just last week proclaiming the inevitable doom of humans based on the original Flippy piece. I second my own 'Ha, ha!'.
You'd think the maximum output per minute would have been detailed in the user manual, but it was probably written up as YMMV based on network conditions. I wonder if Flippy requires a direct connection to the net and then could be hacked to serve raw burgers or burn them up and start a fire.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
It's designed to work with existing appliances and workers. They should just get a machine to do the whole burger, like this.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
Was continually Machoed Out by a little blonde girl (Megan Kelly)
Slanderous selective editing which has caused her ratings and credibility to tank.
Had to resort to personal attacks against other candidates (a sure sign of "no ammunition" and "low intelligence")
Pot/Kettle
Grabbing the genitals of random women WHILE MARRIED
Starstruck women who throw themselves at rich/famous people. What a concept.
Fucking skeezy porn chicks WHILE MARRIED, and right after her HAVING HIS BABY
She was paid to make up the story and can't back it up. Reminds me of the made up pissing hookers story.
Shit 'businessman', keeps going bankrupt to the point where no bank will loan him money (except the Russians, LOL)
How much money have you made? How many businesses have you started and what ratio of them were successful? Try to avoid dividing by zero.
Is so dumb he actually falls for all the flattery the Russians laid on him since the 80's
Is so dumb that now he's in the hip pocket of Russia and Putin
Russia is moving away from the murderous communism of its past and is trying to become prosperous. Clearly everyone should hate that!
Employs mainly criminals and idiots; the smart ones get tired of his shit and leave
Well gosh, you've stumped me. I didn't know he employed the DNC!
Is HATED more and more every single day, by even his own so-called 'core support'
Polls over-sampling leftists still find him at/over 50% approval.
Will soon be indicted on criminal charges and very likely TREASON; enjoy your firing squad, Donnie
Charges like...? Pro tip: not liking him doesn't make him a criminal. Also, trying to improve the nation he represents is the opposite of treason.
..and you voted for this fucking loser. Really, you should just kill yourself, there's no recovering from this.
What a kind, loving and tolerant person you are!
California condemns flippy as being racist because it could end the careers of thousands of illegal aliens and CNN blames this in Donald Trump. Hillary is sure that Russia has something to do with this and says you should completely ignore the uranium mines she sold to them.
We're not going to have arguments with these people
I worked at Burger King (no, I'm not embarrassed), and they don't flame broil burgers by hand, they use a machine with a conveyor belt. You put the frozen burger in one end, and it comes out the other end flame broiled.
It means less burger flipping jobs, so what, it also means more cleaning and deep fryer jobs.
The only reason people who have a clue care about this robot is because it's a robot. The sleepeople don't know why they like it, but it's a robot.
I think Burger King already has a working burger cooking robot. It's called a charbroiler.
Since when are milkshake machines robots?
You would be surprised what "human staff" will tolerate when they aren't the end consumer or have a vested interest in success or cleanliness. I used to work with a company that produced food processing equipment and there are things I cannot "un see" and food brands I will never consume again.
I watched the video - those things spend way too much time and motion screwing around swapping spatulas. Redesign the hand - include multiple spatulas already.
And then there's the whole concept of having TWO or more flippy's... done.
They could have made the Flippy burgers twice the price of regular burgers, with a separate line to give the people ordering Flippies a viewing opportunity to the assemblage of their burger as they wait.
If necessary, s/he could get Alexa's voice (without the cackling laugh)
Question - why does it need to be arm at all?
Surely just sliding the burgers into a double-sided wire-cage "envelope", then sticking them on the heat, lifting, rotating 180, putting on the heat again, then lifting, tilting, open a little "gate" at the end, and slide them out is not only quicker, easier, more consistent, more sensible and easier to make but it also reduces pretty much all the difficult jobs involved in it.
The excuse they used was that the robot can flip individual burgers when they get hot enough, but my brain just says "have even heating, for even times" rather than pissing about with computer vision, articulated hands, and still needing kitchen staff to arrange the meat in a certain way and work around it.
There have been automated burger machines for decades. It was always cheaper to just pay someone to do it, especially when it comes to cleaning, faults, maintenance, etc. The burger-flipping and consistent-cooking is the EASY part. They've taken that, over-complicated it to extremes, and not solved any of the original problems anyway (i.e. who cleans Flippy?).
The issue with automation like this is they run at a specific rate. The machine can produce X number of burger per hour or pick X number of boxes an hour etc...
So for things like manufacturing were you run at a fixed rate turning out X number of widgets per hour they work great.
However in a variable environment like this when Flippy can't keep up, it can't ask the order taking kiosk to come in the back and help catch up. You can't schedule extra flippy's to come in on a day you know will be busy like a holiday, sporting event, festival etc..
Doesn't mean it can't work, but makes it much more expensive as you have to design for peak volume by having 3 of these machines with one always running 2 running during normal peaks and 3 when you have an unusual high demand.
Flippy is either a Gimmick or the creation of people who don't understand automation. You don't just stick a 6-axis robot in an otherwise bone stock grill station. The more obvious solution is a conveyor belt and a double sided griddle. Servos and solenoids perform material handling much cheaper and more efficiently.
Welcome to the future...where not only humans are unemployed...
I wonder what the current RUR (Robot Unemployment Rate) is?
You seem to be an exception. Millennial's actually prefer doing things the touchscreen in hundreds of languages, with pictures, and an incredible number of options. Because non-English speaking, uncaring, fast food workers screwup about 30% of the orders they get.. Please look at some of the results in Los Angeles McDonald's restaurants where there was an option of the machine versus a human. The machine was uniformly more correct, more polite (think about that) and completely accurate.
Have you ever considered that perhaps something should not be done by people? Like weaving cloth harvesting grain, etc. by hand? How much (if you're old enough to actually remember this) do you actually miss human telephone operators making your long-distance connections? How much do you miss having a human elevator operator? I remember both of these and we kind of accepted them as the natural order of things. But they're not.
Seriously.
As soon as you add mechanical complexity then you're adding maintenance costs.
If the worker being replaced is paid a low wage, the cost:benefit is low. The low-hanging fruit for automation are more-or-less intellectual but repetitive tasks with higher pay rates and that's been going on for 40 years (when was the last time you saw a room full of accounts ledger clerks scratching away?)
The more likely targets for unemployment are accountants, junior lawyers and suchlike. The investment to do so is lower and the rewards are higher.
Minimum wages won't fall, but the number of higher-paid jobs will decline, bringing more people DOWN to minimum wage.
You'd starve to death if you expected the robot to make it look like the marketing pics. They spend hours making sure every detail is just right, individual placement of the sesame seeds etc. You aint ever getting it like it look in the pictures.
> Question - why does it need to be arm at all?
Well, I think the whole reason for having articulated arms is so they can be used for other purposes.
Having a machine that just flips burgers is a waste of technology. Aren't we pursuing AI so that we can have general-purpose robots that are smart enough (or programmable enough) to do a variety of tasks that humans do?