Robot Restaurant

By Yool Tark

Technology is a big part of our daily life. However, because of the coronavirus, technology has more closely influenced our everyday lives. The most important thing to prevent getting infected by the coronavirus is practicing social distancing. To do this, people should not eat out or spend time with other people and wear masks all time. Due to COVID- 19, it has become much harder to eat out due to fears of getting infected. In addition, many restaurants have become short-staffed causing various repercussions. Luckily, the creation of new robots has solved these problems. Many food-related robots have been invented. The most interesting ones include robot waiters, Domino’s self-driving delivery cars, and a robot chef that can taste as well as cook.

 A robot waiter generally looks much like a portable bookshelf, but they also have specific details. The BellaBot, invented by Pudu Robotics, looks and even acts like a cat. It has cat-shaped ears and purrs when a customer pets it. If a customer pets Bella too much though, it will be annoyed and will return to the kitchen. In addition to these features, it is a practical robot too. It has a touchscreen, four shelves, and uses an infrared camera that helps it find its way around the restaurant. A worker can put food on the shelves, and type in a table number. Then, BellaBot will deliver the food to that table. After Bella arrives at a certain table, it will announce its presence and ask the customer to press the confirm button. If the customer does not, Bella will still go back to the kitchen after it notices that its shelves are empty. Even though robot waiters like BellaBot do a lot of work for the restaurant, they do not replace human waiters, but instead, help them in many ways.

 Domino’s self-driving delivery car was made in collaboration with an American robotics’ company called Nuro. This car was the first self-driving unmanned delivery vehicle with a permit from the U.S. Department of Transportation. To get a pizza from this car, you need to first place a prepaid order for Nuro’s R2 delivery. Then, Dominos will send you the ID pin. You can then meet the delivery car at your curb. Afterward, you may enter the pin on the touchscreen part of the car and grab your order. So far, this self-driving car operates in three states, Arizona, California, and Texas.

  A robot chef created by researchers at Cambridge University has been trained to cook as well as taste food at the three stages of chewing. “If robots are to be used for certain aspects of food preparation, it’s important that they can taste what they are cooking,” said Grzegorz Sochacki, from the department of Engineering. The robot has a salinity sensor that allows it to check the saltiness of foods as well as other tastes. Researchers at Cambridge University served nine different types of scrambled eggs with tomatoes to test if the robot works well. Researchers blended the egg mixture to replicate chewing. Thanks to this action, the robot was able to taste two different ingredients. It could also sense all the different changes in the taste of the food. This robot has smaller versions of the arms that robots at a car factory have.  It was designed like this so that it would be smaller and cheaper. Although it will probably be used in restaurants soon, scientists say that this robot will eventually be trained to be used in household kitchens as well.

 Robots and technology are affecting our lives, especially the restaurant-related aspects of it. Although we can choose whether or not to use these robots now, someday we must join the wave of the future of food-related robots.