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Walmart Is Reportedly Testing a Burger-Flipping Robot (yahoo.com)
Flippy, a burger-flipping robot that's been trialed in a number of restaurants this year, is coming to Walmart's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, to see whether or not it's the right fit for its in-store delis. Yahoo News reports: Flippy is the world's first autonomous robotic kitchen assistant powered by artificial intelligence from Miso Robotics, a two-year-old startup. Flippy got a gig at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles with vending food service company Levy Restaurants, part of Compass Group, to fry up chicken tenders and tater tots. Through the World Series, Flippy churned out 17,000 pounds worth of the fried foods. It's able to fry up to eight baskets of food simultaneously. "Walmart saw what we were doing and said, 'Could you bring Flippy from Dodgers Stadium to our Culinary Institute?'" Miso Robotics CEO David Zito told Yahoo Finance.
In practice, a Walmart associate would place a frozen product on the rack. Using visual recognition technology, Flippy identifies the food in the basket and sets it in the cooking oil. The machine then "agitates" the basket by shaking it to make sure the product cooks evenly. When the food is finished cooking, Flippy moves the basket to the drip rack. An associate then tests the food's internal temperature. A few minutes later, the associate can season the food before it hits the hot display case. The reason Walmart is looking at the robot is so it can do some of the more mundane and repetitive tasks at the deli. The robot is supposed to serve as an "extra set of hands," letting the associate spend less time putting potato wedges and chicken tenders in fryers and more time on other services like taking customer orders and prepping other foods.
In practice, a Walmart associate would place a frozen product on the rack. Using visual recognition technology, Flippy identifies the food in the basket and sets it in the cooking oil. The machine then "agitates" the basket by shaking it to make sure the product cooks evenly. When the food is finished cooking, Flippy moves the basket to the drip rack. An associate then tests the food's internal temperature. A few minutes later, the associate can season the food before it hits the hot display case. The reason Walmart is looking at the robot is so it can do some of the more mundane and repetitive tasks at the deli. The robot is supposed to serve as an "extra set of hands," letting the associate spend less time putting potato wedges and chicken tenders in fryers and more time on other services like taking customer orders and prepping other foods.
Yeah, let me know when we get a robot that can do steaks.
I just did a spit-take all over my monitor and keyboard when I read that.
Dude.. it's Walmart, what do you expect?
This just in: Your robot wants steak.
Post your DXA scan results with timestamp, you Euro.
This is not a new device. A friend of mine had a fry machine in his pinball parlor in the late 70's or early 80's. Put in your money, a dose of frozen fries falls into a basket, the basket lowers into hot oil for a fixed amount of time, comes out, dosed with salt, dumped into a cup, and dropped into the output area. Full automated. No AI at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I had no idea Walmart had a deli.
Me either. The two Walmarts closest to me do not have delis. But they do have in-store McDonalds. I believe the burgerbot would make a lot more sense there.
The lower middle class, Walmart's key demographic, in general is pretty jittery about automation making their jobs obsolete. Reminding them via a baker-bot is not good for business.
It's the kind of thing say Burger King should pursue, not Walmart. While Burger King may lose some customers to the mentioned spook-factor, it can carve out a niche by using the automation to be cheaper than competitors. You'd gain enough customers by being cheaper to compensate for those lost due to the spook-factor. You'd be trading one kind of customer for another, more or less.
Walmart cannot take the same risk, being it's not in the food business. People generally don't come to Walmart for food such that cheaper food is not a significant selling point, it's only a side perk. Burger King can afford to switch its target audience via such automation, Walmart can't.
I'll try to explain this with numeric examples using rough values.
Burger King (BK) before bots:
- Typical purchase amount: $10
BK after bots:
- Typical purchase amount: $8
- Customers lost due to bot-spook: %30
- Customers gained due to lower prices: %30
(Profit margins could be the owner benefit.)
Walmart (WM) before bots:
- Typical purchase amount: $80
WM after bots:
- Typical purchase amount: $79
- Customers lost due to bot-spook: %20
- Customers gained due to lower fast-food prices: %5
Because people don't buy as much store-cooked fast food at WM compared to BK, they are not saving enough to be persuaded by the price difference, both in total difference, and compared to their total purchase.
But because the baker-bot is fairly obvious, or will make news, many will pay attention. Thus, the bot-spook is almost the same amount as BK. WM would have most the spook but a fraction of customer wallet benefits of BK.
Thus, having bots in your store may only make sense if it lowers the prices and/or improves the quality of your main products. Customers will tolerate bot-spook more if they get a significantly better deal because of it. Don't waste jitters on side items.
Table-ized A.I.
At least read the summary.... gee.
You can CONVERSE. The robot described it little more than a mechanical deep fryer. It isn't replacing the person taking the order. Second, the whole.... 'tech improvements cost people jobs' has been proven false time and time again. Every single improvement in technology since the advent of harnessing fire could be explained as costing someone their job, yet jobs still exist. As someone who has worked at Walmart for a very long time, I've seen a lot of technology introduced and heard people moaning about 'replacing the workers', yet we are still here. People who used to brute force problems instead are trained to become people who use technology to solve problems. Having the person who is taking your order and slicing your cheese go over to a fryer when it beeps isn't adding to anyone's quality of life and if a robot can lift the basket out of the fryer, great. Maybe that person who is helping you will be a little happier for the help.
I, for one, find it exciting that robots are becoming common place enough that you can actually have a robot go up and down grocery aisles scanning outs so the person who used to do it can instead spend more of their time getting those outs filled and maintaining their departments standards. I think it is truly amazing that a robot can go up and down the aisles scrubbing the floors so that the person who use to do that can focus on more detailed cleaning tasks. Then again, I'm old, so I'm just happy to see actual autonomous robots in my lifetime.
Finally, you want nutritious... you probably should be looking at the deep fat fryer. Try the local produce and support your local farmers. It's in the produce section. Deli food is for convenience, and like most fast foods, isn't usually a good choice for nutrition.
Back when I used to work on those giant microwave ovens for them, the local McDonalds restaurant got a robot to cook their fries. It worked, but apparently not as efficiently as teenagers and senior citizens, so it was gone after several months. That was about 25 years ago, BTW.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Burger king has always used robots.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
a Walmart associate would place a frozen product on the rack. Using visual recognition technology, Flippy identifies the food in the basket and sets it in the cooking oil. The machine then "agitates" the basket by shaking it to make sure the product cooks evenly. When the food is finished cooking, Flippy moves the basket to the drip rack. An associate then tests the food's internal temperature. A few minutes later, the associate can season the food before it hits the hot display case.
That just sounds nasty.
I'm actually pretty sure robots can do a better job of it, too, eventually. Stuff them with sensors, perfectly seasoned, juicy burger every time. And no one will spit into it if they happen to be having a bad day.
But why?
McDonald's has been using clamshell grills over 30 years.
Kriston
Point is restaurants are eliminating employees - the order kiosk and pay kiosk at the table, robots for food prep
Banks are putting a kiosk in the lobby to eliminate tellers
All to bring a red box store in a vending machine outside a drug store for food or banking or, as it now exists, movie rental and return.
This eliminates several percent of the total paid jobs in the USA which is the current refuge of former manufacturing jobs.
Expect to see a fully automated food truck some time in the future with autonomous driver.
You don't just vote in elections. Every time you buy something, you're voting with your dollars. Businesses just chase your dollars. Ultimately it's you who determines what direction companies and executives take. It just doesn't feel like you're in control because like with elections, nearly half the people lose almost half the time. Walmart grew into the behemoth it is because people preferred to buy cheap Chinese products rather than more expensive American-made products. If you think Americans are buying Chinese-made goods because Walmart opted to carry them instead of American-made goods, you have cause and effect reversed.
I like to be able to CONVERSE with my food preparation humans.
When was the last time you conversed with your food preparation human?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Around 21,000 dollars, then?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
... I'm stoned as fuck.
Earthlings are so interesting.
I read that as Burglar-Flipping Robot... sounds much better when you're stoned :D
Shit, they'd problably make more money if they flipped burglars - mount a camera and hilarious break-in attempts will trend, profit!
No sig for you! Come back one year!
There's a reason those burger places are not named "In-and-Out Conversation" or "Conversation King". You go there to get a burger, not to converse with food-preparation people.
Why would banks put in kiosks to eliminate tellers?
Any service they have that can be automated that way I can do online.
The only reason to visit the bank is for things that haven't been automated yet and I hate every moment of it.
What I am surprised by is that the hamburger chains haven't automated the kitchen yet.
It shouldn't be much more complex than the assembly lines for TV-dinners.
The food is already industrial level and the quality will hardly be worse by it.
If anything it will be better and if I get to put in what I want myself it will also be what I ordered.
If I want edible food and service from a human I go to a regular restaurant.
Yes, there is (at least) one recipe for a deep fried burger. The "best" are from Dyers in Tennessee, apparently. Most are cooked in a skillet or on a grill/griddle.
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
Yeah, let me know when we get a robot that can do steaks.
Steaks are easy if you stick a probe in them. Treat them like rotisserie chickens; mount them to a fixture before cooking. Cook to temperature, observing the temperature curve in the process to know precisely when to stop. That's a trivial job, albeit not quite as trivial as cooking chickens on actual rotisseries (cook for x hours at y degrees, hold for a hours at b degrees, stop.)
Fries are another job it makes no sense to do traditionally. Make the fixture that the fry basket attaches to move, so it can shake the fries periodically, and no arm has to attach to the basket to shake it. That's a third of the job right there.
Regardless, steaks are stupidly simple compared to burgers, specifically because they will take a temp probe gracefully.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Yeah, let me know when we get a robot that can do steaks."
Any decent robot should be able to use a George Foreman Grill to do steaks.
Also a robot wouldn't flip burger, it would use an assembly line grill that would grill the burger on both sides until it's done when it gets out the other side.
Automatic bakeries do it that way too.
"Flippy moves the basket to the drip rack". Unlike its human counterparts that just dump grease and fries together on the serving table. Man I hate that at any fast food place I go to!
This is what happens when people with no skills and neck tattoos have to make, what used to be entry level jobs, their career. Then all the SJWs "fight" (hah) for what they want to call a 'living wage'.
Scrolled waaaay to far for this.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
I don't think this is for burgers. First, aren't the burgers cooked on a conveyer through an oven, like all the pizza's are cooked? And second, burgers aren't cooked in a deep fryer, are they?
This sounds more like a conveyer to dunk "food" (and please, let's use that term lightly) in a deep fryer. Seems like that should be a fairly simple machine, too. Can you really call that a "robot"?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Robots are much better than humans â" not because of cost. I would pay MORE for robots. Humans have HR dangers. They might sue you, the might sabotage you, they have conflicts with each other. Forget al the BS and drama of dealing with humans. Go with robots.
As for jobs, just tax the robot and provide humans with income (basically the rvso they dont blackmn
Dipping frozen shit in oil is not cooking. Call me up when a robot can actually make real food.
No, we do not deep fat fry hamburgers in the US.
Some places have fried hamburgers as a menu item. Not the well-known national chains like McDonald's or Burger King, but I've had one at a local burger place, and it was quite good. It's not really any different than getting a fried steak that a lot of breakfast restaurants have.