'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."

Comments

I have seen the future, and it sucks

[93 Escort Wagon]

"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.

Re:I have seen the future, and it sucks

[Kjella]

Service jobs require providing services to people, whether that's a burger or fixing their plumbing. This all requires human interaction and that robot is never going to take over that job.

Really? If I enter my order on a touch screen, it's cooked by a robot and delivered in a self-service kiosk and it's the same burger... who really appreciates the social interaction with the McD/BK staff? Usually my interaction is "Next, please" "Hi, I'll have [order]." "Anything else?" "No, that's it." "That'll be $X" *pay* *wait* "[order]" "Thanks" *eat* *put trash in bin on way out*. If you want to talk about something that could be replaced with a very small shell script it's the social interaction. I don't know how it could possibly get less personal or less meaningful. And you don't go there for the culinary experience, you go there for standardized grub. A robot is perfect for giving you a consistent experience. Of course if I go to a high-end restaurant with a waiter and a real chef my expectations are different, but it's different leagues.

And even three star Michelin restaurants have "standard" dishes, like they're training the staff to exactly replicate whatever the master chef has cooked up. Granted it's an entirely different level of service but it's not really that unique, personal service that we'd like to imagine. If I go to a steakhouse and get a prime steak cooked to perfection I'll probably put up with a whole lot of other downsides, whatever you think the service is I think it's a small auxiliary. The service is not why I go to your steakhouse and poor service probably won't make me leave as long as the product tastes to high heaven. And the product can be made by a robot.

Re:I have seen the future, and it sucks

[AuMatar]

Good for you. Nobody else gives a shit. I just want my food, I don't care if its cooked by a person, a robot, or if the cow jumps on the grill voluntarily. I don't go to the restaurant for interaction, I go because I don't want to cook. So long as its good, I don't care what prepared it.

Re:I have seen the future, and it sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

A robot in the kitchen is one less pair of human hands that didn't get washed after taking a dump, one less human mouth to sneeze on my food, etc. That's comforting to me at a fast food restaurant.

Do you mind automated butchering of meat and how would you know?

If your order isn't to spec (less likely of course with a robot as it doesn't get bored, tired, or misread the order), you'd do just what you do now - complain to the human manager who should make it right.

Re:Too bad

[vux984]

"I'd rather have a machine make my food than a human. "

You know those odd horror stories about a dead rodent found in a can of tomatoes or jar of pickles. Yeah, that's how good the machines are. Admittedly that's the worst case scenario; but for every dead rat in a can or jar, there's 10 generations of rats living in and around those machines, getting into the food, taking shits, and otherwise living their lives out.

As for the robots in a fast food joint; same thing. I worked fast food as a kid; a good team would tear down, strip, and sanitize the milkshake machine, every gasket, and o-ring. A lazy cleaning crew might it rinse out, but not do a complete tear down, and leave all the rings and gaskets in place. And you'll get nasty residue and build up in all those little nooks and crannies.

The milkshake machine is a 'robot' and it can get gross fast. A lazy graveyard cleaning crew might not get caught for a month... until a health inspector opens it up and notices the brown crust growing around the drive shaft. Or a customer completes about some 'gross' sludge from finally broke off and game out in their serving.

"machines can't some soon enough as far as I'm concerned."

Very few human staff will tolerate a rat or a roach on the table while they're preparing your food. A rat can nibble on the bun, with roaches hanging out in the lettuce while a machine puts your burger together.

Re:How hard can it be?

[Nkwe]

Really, How hard can it be to come up with a burger flipping robot?

Setting aside for a moment the humor aspect of the parent, I think the non-sarcastic answer to this question is actually pretty interesting. If the question is really "How hard is it to automatically cook a hamburger patty?", the answer is that it's pretty easy if you get to design the whole machine in and the environment that it runs in. If you can use a wire conveyor belt and heating elements on both sides similar to how the sandwich toasters at Quizno's and Potbelly and add some stuff for grease management, you are probably set. Even if it turns out that you really need to heat from the bottom and let the patty sit in the grease, you could build something similar to how an automated tortilla cooker works. But on the other hand, if your requirement is to build a device that must operate in conjunction with an existing restaurant grill, without modifying the grill itself, and the device needs to take no more space than would a human standing in front of the grill, and this device has to safely operate around other human restaurant workers amidst the chaos of motion and activity that occurs in a small kitchen, and the device has to be as productive as a human would, the task is pretty complex and hard.