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'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."
"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.
"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
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.
"I see you're trying to flip a burger, would you like help with that?"
We'll make great pets
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)
So your reasoning is that because robots have not taken over the world in one week, they never will?
...not switched off fast enough to not show up here as a dupe.
Which is why /. will be shutting down their robot "Posty" -- similar problems as with Flippy.
"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."
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
What are you talking about? I don't see this story duped.
Nooooo! Flippy want to live!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I think Burger King already has a working burger cooking robot. It's called a charbroiler.
If necessary, s/he could get Alexa's voice (without the cackling laugh)
Beedeebeedeebeedee... fuck you, Buck!
(supposedly a real outtake from Mel Blanc when he was getting annoyed/tired after a long day in the recording studio)
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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?).
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.