Burger flippers, pizza tossers, and latte frothers, watch your backs: Gordon, Sally, and Kona are entrance for you. (And they never need to take a ill day.) Over a final few years, a flourishing army of fit cost-cutting robots has arrived to automate a operation of food prep tasks, from defeat adult salads for a Palo Alto lunchtime rush to spicing late-night curry for inspired MIT coeds. They join a ranks of robo-cooks already renouned in Asia; in China, there’s even a bot-staffed grill called Wall.E. Whether portion as sous prepare in a kitchen or streamlining your takeout order, there is maybe no improved aim for Silicon Valley’s ardour for intrusion than a food industry.
Coffee Maker: Avoid barista side-eye by removing your coffee from a six-axis robotic arm named Gordon. Built by Mitsubishi, Gordon has been bubbling and pouring espresso drinks in a glass-enclosed San Francisco kiosk, Cafe X, given January. It’s like a java ATM, reduction overdraft fees.
Greens Goddess: Launched by Redwood City, California, startup Chowbotics in April, Sally is an Automat-style box filled with 21 canisters of chopped ingredients. She can emanate over 1,000 salad combinations—presumably while introspective a gender politics of whoever motionless to name a calorie-counting salad drudge “Sally.”
Pizza Machine: At Zume Pizza in Silicon Valley, robots prep mix balls into thin-crust pies, allot and widespread a sauce, and send pizzas to and from 800-degree ovens. The pizzas are delivered in trucks given with dozens of intelligent ovens to keep a pies hot. The tip sauce? Predictive analytics.
Dorm ’Droid: Leave it to a garland of MIT students to ascent their dining gymnasium options by conceptualizing a entirely programmed minirestaurant. At Spyce Kitchen, a drudge prepare needs reduction than 5 mins to prepare dishes such as jambalaya or chickpea coconut curry. Nothing is served on a cosmetic tray.
Noodle Duo: Ninety-second ramen doesn’t have to come in a microwavable cup. Since 2015, twin robots Koya and Kona have been concocting made-to-order bowls during Toyako, in Shanghai. The span can boil water, prepare noodles, drain broth, and lot out veggies, meat, and eggs in reduction than dual minutes.
Burgermeister: Robotics association Momentum Machines has built a entirely unconstrained savage able of barbecuing 400 burgers an hour. Though Momentum has nonetheless to open a initial plcae (slated for San Francisco), expectations are high—and a buns are brioche.
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