The whole concept is stupid. Flipping burger with mechanical arms? That's about the most inefficient way to cook a burger as you can get. All it's good for is showboating.

If they really want to streamline fast food cooking and costs with machines. An automatic self patty loading George Foreman style grill that cooks both sides at once would be what makes the most sense.

It's like instead of building a simple sewing machine, you build a complex mechanical arm to hold a needle and threads instead.

It's mechanical engineering 101. Instead of designing something based on the process that achieves the goal. Just design something that achieves the goal.

As a chef who went to school to learn about Robotics I found this the worst example of of how to use them. The only reason this exist is to try and scare people not to raise the slave wages the industry pays its workers.

This exists because of backwards compatibility and modular design theory.

They're going to replace them with robots anyway. They don't need to pretend it's going to happen. They're not going through the trouble of developing and deploying robot burger flippers to avoid raising minimum wage. They're going to avoid raising minimum wage AND replace their workers with robots. This is a product targeted towards owners of existing restaurants.

If Anonynonymous is right we'll eventually see that, and it wouldn't surprise me if we do in brand new restaurants. But as I pointed out last time, if you're going to upgrade an existing system with new technology it makes much more sense to do affordable piecemeal upgrades that can be swapped out if they break down or if your workers can't keep up.

This exists because WE are the scary robots we will take your job if you ask for more than $7.25 an hour and for NO OTHER REASON!!!

And people like you with a vested interest feed the bullshit narrative.

This piece of trash is clumsy to big and ineffective. Doesn't say much for your expertise that you can't see that. And it doesn't say much for a business acumen that you research and and build an less effective device than a $7.25 human...that is the guy we need to replace...that will sure show up in the bottom line ya go after those $10.000 a year folks...that should tell you all you need to know about this abomination

it is also kinda amusing that you thing flipping hamburgers is most important thing even in a burger joint...specially on that takes a human to put on cheese and takes up 1/3 of the cooking space on your flat top....

P.S. if you have somebody to put on the cheese...they can flip the burger..and your cost is $0

P.S. II What happens if somebody wants a grilled cheese...need another grill?

This robo arm was made by a company called miso robotics. 2 years old. There are already a host of companies that create machines for the production of ready to eat meals. Miso robotics is more Noka and Juicero than Nestle and Pepsico.

When a company called something like Inafune Agricultural Robotic Concern has a booth at a industry convention than i'll take it seriously. Right now, this just looks like someone fishing for a Google buyout.

Flippy’s entry level price tag is $60,000 — considerably higher than your average burger chef makes in a year. There’s also a 20-percent recurring annual fee for the robot’s leaning and maintenance,

The maintenance fee alone is approximately the cost of a minimum wage worker .

What they REALLY need to do is hire a Burger Flipper Operator (BFO) to control Flippy via remote control. That way, Flippy works at the same speed as everyone else. Sure it’ll cost more, but your efficiency will go back UP to what it was before. Progress.

You think you're being funny, but something like this is likely to happen as the robot arms (and the rest of their bodies) get cheaper. One remote operator can maintain multiple robot locations while the software records their movements to train a neural network that eventually takes over their job. The human then only becomes needed when anomalies require their attention, and again, that anomaly response becomes new training data. This is one of the reasons I've been trying to get people more aware of VR. It makes humans swappable with robots while they train their replacements.

Other alternatives, we Uberize the fast food positions by having independent contractors aka "small business entrepreneurs" use an app to bid for shifts at local restaurants.

Or why stop there, an Uber like VR application that allows remote independent contractors to bid for individual anomalies.

They could even gamify the whole thing and mix it into actual realtime gameplay as challenges to players of a high enough rank who have exhibited enough skill and reliability to not fuck it up.

No guarantees that'll work out tho ;)
Job Simulator Gameplay - Gourmet Chef - HTC Vive


edit: wrote this before I saw your comment below... above?

They already outsource the drive through teller. I mean the upside to having desperate refugees working the burger flipper to fend off being repatriated, is faster internet.

I'd think taking drive-thru orders would be the easiest thing to automate, with Alexa tech.

Sure, for a couple of years I've been chicken little yelling that they've been doing the same thing with bank tellers and video atms. It's not just robots and AI we have to worry about, there's a whole combination of technology that are growing exponentially in their abilities to wipe out jobs.

Everyone is a horse in a world about to get automobiles.

Welcome to the Chicken Little club. ;)

This always makes me laugh...this thing is a side show to scare the dweebs.

The automatic burger flipping machine is older that I am ...

The predecessor to Burger King, Insta-Burger King, began deploying the original broiling device in 1952 when its owners, Matthew Burns and Kieth Kramer, acquired the rights to George Read's Inst-Shake and Insta-Broiler machines. The Insta-Broiler cooked the burgers in a wire basket between two broilers, allowing the burgers to be cooked on both sides simultaneously. The machine was capable of cooking over 400 patties per hour, which allowed the company to grow rapidly. When McLamore and Edgarton opened their first Insta-Burger King location in Miami, they revamped the unit into what they called a "flame broiler" – the forerunner of the modern unit used by Burger King today.[69] After the acquisition of Insta-Burger King in 1954, the pair contracted the construction of the newly designed flame broilers to the SaniServ company of Indianapolis, Indiana, for the initial run of broilers.[notes 11] Eventually, the company moved the manufacturing contract for the broiler units to Nieco Automatic Broilers of Windsor, California, who manufactured all subsequent units until the start of the 2000s.[70]


They work quite well but now they are robots we should fear the automation....ohhhh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burger_King_products

My response was more tounge in cheek that the solution to the speed of the robot was to hire a human to operate it. A human that could also just flip the burgers.

I agree with you that this particular item is a side show.

The understandable fear is that we see the robotic arm doing the banal things that humans do (used to do) for a paycheck and sometimes a career.

An automated machine could do the process a million times faster but would be required to look like a machine that can only process burgers.

A robotic arm is less efficient, but it’s doing what YOU used to do. It’s not a far leap to have a robot with legs (more inneffecient) standing in the back flipping the burgers. More inefficient to put skin on that monstrosity so that people can relate to it. More inefficient to make that robotic form lithe and attractive to the general population. Maybe give it a voice?

Sure, I'm not saying this is the be all end all of fast food robots. I'm just saying bbq doesn't know what he's talking about.

I get you. Thing is the burger making device is old hat, and it doesn't need AI.

Automatic Hamburger Machine - 50 Years Ahead of Its Time!



Now i don't think this thing is being made as a strikebreaker as BBQ says, but it is meant to send a message. Which is fund my company. They picked a burger flipper to intentionally be incendiary. Because in the rest of their material it seems like its utility is for what you emphasized. Restaurants. Not fast food. Shit, more likely commercial kitchens. Because they would have call to be able to cater to a range of possible food products. Fast does not, they already drill down hard on assembly line cooking. Limited menu, clear procedure, pre-proportioned like a motherfucker. They want the Toha Heavy Industries Burger Maker. The one BBQ is talking about. Miso robotics is boutique.

Miso robotics wants money, so the flippy stunt. Im surprised their youtube video doesnt ask me to like and subscribe, check out their patreon, hit up their indiegogo page, and consider their gofundme campaign. I don't think BBQ is wrong, and neither are you, i think you're just discussing different things.

I mean, it's a stunt in that they're showing of their robotic arm, sure. That was a never a question to me. That's what this post is about, it's right there in the quote, no? Flippy, the burger-flipping robot that threatens to supplant short-order cooks. While bbq is going on about propaganda (and practically writing their ad copy for them) he's missing that this isn't a burger flipping robot, this is a robot arm in the price range of many small businesses that happens to currently be trained to flip burgers. This is an introductory product marketed towards existing shops who don't want rip their grill (or other equipment) out and rebuild their entire workflow at a price point far out of their league, all for about the cost they'll make back in a year after letting go one or two full time employees. I mean, that's going to be a very big market.

My argument here is that bbq and Anonynonymous are balking at the steps in between where we are and where we're going to end up by ignoring how businesses operate and technology advances.

So it comes down to is Miso Robotics a good investment. Because i don't think anyone is contending certain industries are robot proof. Just whether flippy will be that bullet. Unless you have a background in the restaurant industry i would side with bbq and anonynonymous.

Its the mundane economics of it. That occurring at a time when jobs are being shed to robotics. Will there be a middle class to justify? Because quick and cheap will be automated by a different beast. If you're paying premium i expect a human working in the kitchen. People wont shell out +$100 per person at Sasabune or Blue Hill at Stone Barns for a robot made meal. There is displacement, i don't think flippy is going to do it. I could be wrong.

I mean, I've been a bar back and a bus boy, but I don't see how that would that give me expertise on how to run a business anymore than being a chef would. More relevant though, I've been an electronic tech in the navy (aka a janitor), IT support up and down the tiers, lower management, a Department Head, a small business owner, and I've dabbled in almost every computer related field there is, including AI. I don't know about investing in Miso Robotics in particular, but robot arms are now cheap enough and AI advanced enough that this is a budding industry. Flippy is not the only robot chef out there.

These robotic arms put a five-star chef in your kitchen


Robotic Chef - RoboKiosk® Cooking an Egg Sandwich


The point I've been trying to get across is Flippy isn't a stunt, Flippy's the new entry level.

I think you're overestimating the cost of these things and the time period which that cost is spread. $60k isn't a lot of money when it's capable of working 24 hours a day without breaks, won't take a day off, lowers your turnover/training rate, and will allow the owner to gradually cut shifts/responsibilities of current employees. Remember, tech doesn't necessarily have to replace employees completely, they just have to be able to take on enough responsibilities that you can cut an expensive skilled employee in favor of a cheaper employee that takes on the responsibilities the robot can't yet handle. Like I said, bbq is writing their ad copy for them, "The maintenance fee alone is approximately the cost of a minimum wage worker ." Upgradable, maintained, and works all the shifts non-stop for the annual cost of 1 min wage worker with an upfront cost less than a third that of a Tesla Roadster.

Hell, quick math out of curiosity. If we're talking savings equivalent of replacing one employee making approx $7.50 an hour then ballpark you make your upfront $60k costs back in about 16 years. But if we up the employee wages to $14 an hour like Caliburger here is paying than you're making your money back in less than 4 years. Without the hassle and cost of ripping up your kitchen, without rebuilding your workflow.

And, if you act now...! ;)

What I am saying is this a stage prop...and that you bought into it.

They said they need to train humans to keep up. Things like preparing meat and putting on buns and lettuce. What I intuitively thought was we need more robots that can do other functions.