
Burger robot poised to disrupt fast food industry - sirteno
http://singularityhub.com/2014/08/10/burger-robot-poised-to-disrupt-fast-food-industry/
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djloche
Has there been an update to this project or are they still in the 'hope people
give us money to open up a restaurant staffed by robots' phase?

Their website doesn't appear to have changed since 2012 (when I first heard
about and was excited to see that their restaurant was 'coming soon'. It is a
shame that they haven't yet done so.

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ojanik
Does anyone have a video of this thing? I can't find anything.

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27182818284
There have been ramen-making robots for years. This isn't a disruption at all.
There isn't anything to see here until we read a headline that McDonalds will
pilot it in N stores for 6 months.

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qbrass
If McDonald's isn't providing jobs, then there's little incentive for allowing
one to be built in your community.

McDonald's corporate would rather build more stores, than reduce overhead for
franchisees.

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27182818284
They are involved, that's why they're franchises and not completely
independent "Burger Joint™". With added pressures such as the protests and
strikes in NYC over fast food, it seems to me they're probably paying
attention now more than they have in the last few years.

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beejiu
It's a cool machine, and I'd buy a burger from it for the novelty factor, but
I'm not sure the economics of it stack up. For each burger sold, the staffing
cost is probably no more than 10 cents. This machine would have to be sold
rather cheaply to be able to replace those staff.

I've never had a problem with service time in most fast food restaurants, so
I'm not sure this will improve experience for the customer. It'd be cool to
see something like this applied to busy bars, where it could make any drink
you wanted.

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wmeredith
I've managed a quick service restaurant and I can tell you this is the stuff
of dreams for someone trying to manage that staff, Your estimate of the
staffing costs is way too low. Hands down the biggest challenge was turnover.
It took us about two weeks to train and employee and about a month after that
for them to be really good in the kitchen (if they were ever going to be). The
day crew were stoners and slackers, the night crew was high school kids. In
other words, no one cared much about the job. Our turnover rate was probably
90% in a year and we offered a pretty nice food service job compared to
something like fast food. (It was a McAlister's Deli. On par with a Panera.)
Anyway, not having to train part-time staff, deal with their ongoing drama,
substance abuse, constant scheduling conflicts, etc... would be worth a lot.

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moron4hire
This can't be overstated. Eliminating the minimum wage food worker is going to
be have a huge impact on society. Both for the company and for the people who
work there.

I'm not sure what it means for the people. In one way, fast food is the only
obvious work available for them. That's the only reason they do it, nobody
likes it otherwise. But on the other hand, perhaps it's only the most obvious
choice available. Perhaps more drastic choices, perhaps involving moving to
new cities, would become more attractive and hopefully get them out of wage
slavery.

I'm grasping at straws. This is probably going to be bad for them.

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afafsd
I think in the long term we're going to need a major demographic shift. High-
capability people to rich countries and low-capability people to poor
countries. If someone lives in the United States and isn't capable of any job
beyond manual labour, they should probably look at moving to a country where
manual labour is still in demand.

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fred_durst
There are others, including myself, that believe low skill work is too cheap
to be replaced in the near term. The exact opposite can be said for many
currently "High-capability" people. That's why it's "software is eating the
world" not "robots are eating the world". Mental process replacement is much,
much more scalable than physical process replacement do to the raw material
costs.

We're much more likely to see things like doctors, lawyers and plumbers
replaced with low skill workers that simply act out the last physical mile
dictated by either fully automated decision making or software provided
decision efficiency that allows for example, only one doctor to diagnose every
patient at a hospital. The last physical mile is much more expensive than high
level decision making to replace at scale.

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afafsd
>There are others, including myself, that believe low skill work is too cheap
to be replaced in the near term

Well, the _vast majority_ of low-skill work has already been replaced by
relatively simple machines -- harvesting wheat, digging holes, moving big
heavy objects around. Now we're in a situation where the remaining low-skill
jobs are things which are easy for a human but hard for a machine, like
harvesting oranges, or (for that matter) making hamburgers.

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fred_durst
Plenty of construction workers still dig holes. Plenty of movers still move
big heavy objects around. I wouldn't be so sure as much has been replaced as
you might think. And it's not hard vs. easy but cheap vs. expensive.

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seanflyon
Think of the job of digging a swimming pool sized hole. With bare hands it
would take a ludicrous amount of work. With shovels and wheelbarrows it still
takes lots of labor. With heavy equipment it takes (I'm guessing) a few people
a few days. The shovel removed 90% of those jobs and heavy machinery removed
90% again. That does not however mean there are fewer jobs. It could mean
instead that we dig more holes.

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slurry
Automation tends to hit at the middle, not the bottom.

For example, blacksmiths got replaced by automation. Highly skilled labor,
replaced by machines + lower/unskilled labor.

Burger automation is the fantasy of automating all the way to the bottom of
the skill pile. But I would put my money on new waves of automation that
disrupt skilled labor. There may come a day when we reach the bottom of the
pile and utopia/dystopia is realized, but I don't think that day is today.

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erichocean
_> Burger automation is the fantasy of automating all the way to the bottom of
the skill pile._

Automatic dishwashers, laundry machines, vacuums, automatic car washes are all
widely known examples of replacing low-skill labor with machines. There's also
the _enormous_ amount of low-skill labor that's been removed in agriculture
and the building trade (think: digging ditches by hand, which they still do in
3rd world countries).

Even food preparation labor has been dramatically reduced already at home
thanks to the microwave and the logistic possibility of shipping and storing
frozen foods (not to mention the proliferation of restaurants).

Low-skill activities are almost always the easiest things to automate (that's
why we call them "low skill"). Things that require fuzzy human judgement, like
managing people, are hard—if not impossible—to automate.

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fred_durst
Managing people is absolutely, 100% for at least the last 10 years, being
aggressively and successfully being reduced to low skill labor. For example,
things like ordering inventory, scheduling staff, pricing products are all
done at significantly lower pay rates than were done in the past. The only
thing that has slowed some of the automation is simply a shorter route to
developing nation outsourcing.

The reason developing countries still dig ditches by hand is because it is
still cheaper. The reason for that is not access to automation but the massive
wage differential that makes that labor so cheap. Its the low cost of the
labor that actually protects it from automation. So therefore it follows that
expensive(high and mid skill labor which is even more scalable due to lower
material costs since it can typically be automated without machines) will be
the most profitable segment to either automate away or reduce to low skill
labor.

~~~
erichocean
_> Managing people is absolutely, 100% for at least the last 10 years, being
aggressively and successfully being reduced to low skill labor._

I absolutely agree. One of the startups I'm CTO at builds software that
enables exactly that; however, it also results in new jobs being created at a
higher-level (similar to the situation with robots I suppose).

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fred_durst
By "higher level" do you mean people who can convince others to do things?
That seems to me to be the last higher paid/skill position that will remain
for some time. Which causes me to fear that all we will be left with is
aggressive sales people and business owners.

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smacktoward
_> Of course, businesses are free to spend their savings however they like.
For some, that may mean more quality ingredients or services. For others, it
might be competing with other restaurants by maintaining the same level of
service and ingredients but offering even lower food prices._

Or it could mean management just stuffing the money into their pockets.
Somehow I think this is the most likely outcome.

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ams6110
You've not worked in fast food I take it? It's highly competitive. There is no
margin for "stuffing pockets"

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annatong
Momentum is hiring! - Embedded systems and computer vision experts

Company: Momentum Machines makes the most advanced culinary robots in the
world. Our first device is capable of making gourmet quality hamburgers from
start to finish with no human interaction. The efficiency savings of our
technology alone can cut the price of high quality food in half, making it
affordable for the first time to the vast majority of Americans. This
fundamental shift in the cost equation is augmented by improved quality,
precision, customizability, sanitation, and consistency to the restaurant
industry, ultimately reinventing the customer experience.

Team and position: We are a team of Stanford and Berkeley educated engineers
with roots in machine design, robotics, and restaurant operations. Currently,
we are searching for an experts in embedded systems and computer vision as our
team grows. Please feel free to email us at callings@momentummachines.com if
you would like more information.

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fred_durst
The reality of labor replacement is that low skill workers are likely to be
the very last group to be replaced. The reason for that is how low they are
paid and how expensive physical manufacturing and upkeep of machines are.

Middle management and entry to mid level white collar work are by far the most
susceptible. Also, lower end knowledge jobs. Current trends show low skilled
workers getting cheaper and raw materials getting more expensive so at least
for the near term, low skill worker replacement appears highly unlikely.

Much like the late 90's mid and low level computer programers etc will likely
be eliminated, or reduced to a low skill job, long before low skill workers
are replaced by machines.

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LukeB_UK
Big burnt bits on the bun isn't a good way to say that it does it well
though...

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thret
Presumably once you have the working machine, this can be adjusted to taste.
Actually you'd expect a variety of settings.

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samstave
I want one of these in my home kitchen in ten years. Further, I'd love to see
the same effort applied to many many common dishes: a pasta-bot, ramen-bot,
sandwhich-bot etc..

This company hopefully does the work to ID each bot-module needed for dishes
that are just a combination of separate ingredients that require little
preparation at the time you're assembling the dish.

Also, this thing is IDEAL for stadiums and high-density events. Every stadium
should have one.

This will also be awesome for food trucks. Every military will probably invade
for this.

THis device will succeed assuming it is real, but that doesnt mean it would
replace fast food restaurants.

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afafsd
So instead of paying some bozo minimum wage to flip burgers, you have to pay
someone to fix the burger robot every time it screws up. Which it probably
will, frequently, because it's got a zillion moving parts and a bunch of loose
messy ingredients which can get stuck in them.

Replacing people with robots works great if you're replacing large numbers at
the same factory, because firing workers and hiring robot repairmen still
saves you a lot of money. If you're only going to replace one or two workers
per site, though, it sounds pointless.

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asdfologist
That's exactly what people said about self-checkout lanes.

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wmeredith
You know what's empty every time I go to Home Depot and Costco? Self checkout
lanes. The Costco by my house just took out half of them and added more
staffed stations.

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MrFoof
There are varying implementations.

Stop and Shop supermarkets have Symbol guns running Windows CE, and an
iOS/Android app. You scan as you shop. When you get to a register you scan the
"End Order" barcode on the register, then scan your Stop & Shop card. That's
it. Pay.

They even recently revved their software to speed up the process and reduce
processing delays. I can check out an entire cart in about 40 seconds, and
everything is already bagged the way I want it.

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RogerL
Okay, this makes a burger, and let's assume it can handle all the variations a
normal place would want.

I don't just order burgers. Fries, drinks, ice cream, chicken, salads, wraps,
and many more, are the typical items on a fast food menu. Perhaps in really
busy stores there is a person dedicated to burgers and nothing else, but would
this really reduce the amount of labor you would need? I suspect not (I have
no data to back that up).

Sooner or later all of this will be automated - this machine, by itself, isn't
going to make much of a dent in my opinion.

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WoodenChair
This is super exciting. Would the people who argue against this machine on the
basis that it replaces human workers also argue against the use of robots to
produce cars and computers to replace secretaries? Yes, some people lose their
jobs in the short term, but in the long term the asset reallocation that goes
on in the economy actually creates more jobs than it destroys. Plus, who
doesn't want a more sanitary, cooked-to-order, more customizable burger rather
than the microwaved shit we get at the low-end fast food restaurants today?

The company even addresses the issue on its website: "The issue of machines
and job displacement has been around for centuries and economists generally
accept that technology like ours actually causes an increase in employment.
The three factors that contribute to this are 1. the company that makes the
robots must hire new employees, 2. the restaurant that uses our robots can
expand their frontiers of production which requires hiring more people, and 3.
the general public saves money on the reduced cost of our burgers. This saved
money can then be spent on the rest of the economy. We take these issues very
seriously so please feel free to tell us how we can help with this
transition."

We don't need to take them at their word because something like this is
inevitable anyway. We just need to enjoy the burgers!

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gress
Arguing that technology always creates more jobs than it replaces is as
fallacious as arguing that technological progress should be blocked in order
to protect jobs.

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WoodenChair
On average it does though. With all of the technological progress of the last
200 years, there would be no jobs left if it didn't.

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gress
So all processes that have been running for the past 200 years are sure to
continue indefinitely?

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mschuster91
Well, you will still need employees on the premise to refill the machine,
serve drinks and collect the cash. In a local BurgerKing, there are three
employees: one shift lead, a cashier and a cook.

So the labor costs will not lower significantly, but the quality will
increase.

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im3w1l
The cashier is going (burger king demo:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zNUu9r1S4E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zNUu9r1S4E))
The cook is going, according to this article. Serving drinks is trivial for a
machine.

I guess refilling and cleaning will remain for some time.

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comboy
I find it hard to believe that installation + maintenance + unexpected
maintenance + still some people to prepare ingredients would be cheaper than
cooks.

24 square feet sounds impressive though.

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Karunamon
Thinking about the numbers.. the average McDonald's kitchen, at a midsize
store when I worked there many moons ago, all by itself, had between 2 and 6
people in it. At full staff, there were two assembly lines with two people
each, one guy on the grill, and one guy starting orders by preparing the buns
(the initiator). At low times, one guy on the line, one guy on the grill.

Assuming a reasonably busy location where there is no such thing as a "slow
time" (airport, central metro area, etc), that means you have to pay six
people around $8 an hour for 8 hours. Works out to $384/day on kitchen labor,
give or take.

$2688/week, $139,776/yr. (And that's before taxes, local wage variances and so
on - this is a very rough, very conservative estimate)

There's no way this thing will cost less than $150k - a shake/ice cream
machine costs aroud 50-75k for a much, _much_ more simple set of parts (liquid
pumps, an auger, and a compressor). And that's before you get into maintenance
costs and the cost of having a single point of failure.

Example: One of your kitchen guys gets sick, you can usually call in a
replacement, shift someone from elsewhere in the store, or just run one person
down and deal with it. The Burgermaker 9000, on the other hand, say the tomato
slicer breaks? You're down. Completely and totally.

Combine that with the insane time to break even and see even a penny of ROI..
it ain't happening. Not anytime soon.

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shiny
In that case, Seattle's $15/hr minimum wage may help spur innovation in this
space.

~~~
fred_durst
You're still only at $247,715

The reality is that the more the income gap grows between the servers and
those served, the less profitable automation becomes. There is a reason low
wages jobs are growing, not shrinking in the US.

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lotsofmangos
They'll get infested with stainless steel rats in no time.

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icantthinkofone
When was the last time you walked into a fast food burger place and heard
sizzling in the background? I haven't taken the time to find out but I do know
that, in the rare times I visit a Burger King or Jack-in-the-Box, I have not
seen anyone 'flipping burgers' but, instead, grab them out of what looks like
a steamer. So my suspicion is, no cooking takes place for burgers, at least.

Can anyone verify that?

~~~
afafsd
At Macca's at least they no longer get flipped, but they are cooked from raw-
and-frozen by a top-and-bottom grill thing, apparently in forty seconds.

[http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4616233_mcdonalds-make-
burgers....](http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4616233_mcdonalds-make-burgers.html)

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MereInterest
Off-topic question: What geographic region are you from? I have never before
heard McDonald's referred to as "Macca's", and I am wondering which dialect it
is from.

~~~
jbarham
Australia: [https://mcdonalds.com.au/about-maccas/maccas-
story](https://mcdonalds.com.au/about-maccas/maccas-story)

If you do ever end up down here, it may also be helpful to know that _Burger
King_ is known as _Hungry Jack 's_.

