[JoeAltmaier]

I've been predicting robotic fast food for a decade now. And it's here! By cooking with no human hand ever coming into contact with the ingredients or utensils, clearly a health benefit is accrued. And by steam-cleaning the cooker periodically, quality is improved.

I'd envisioned a somewhat different robot. I thought the ingredients could be tube-delivered like caulking guns, on a rotating 'tool carousel' so you could cook different recipes by selecting and timing. And process vertically so you avoid most 'conveyor belt' issues. Finally do it as drive-thru with automated ordering (touch screen/phone app) to eliminate the rest of the human factor.

The result should be good quality, fast food at a radically cheaper price.

[tantalor]

> no human hand... clearly a health benefit

That is a non sequitur. The most dangerous illness associated with fast food (poor nutrition aside) such as E. coli[1] and Hep A[2] are most readily attributed to ingredient suppliers, not improper food handling.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/2015/o26-11-15/index.html

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm

[gnode]

That doesn't mean that labour aren't a more frequent source of food-borne illnesses, just not the most serious cases. I'm not likely to die from someone sneezing in my food, but I don't want to catch what they have nonetheless.

[dd36]

I was assuming he meant something like the flu. Fast food workers have awful benefits and low pay thus working while sick.

[pbalau]

True, but with a full automatic system to convert those ingredients to food, you could add a test step, where you filter out the contaminated ingredients.

[knieveltech]

I feel like waiting for the labs to come back on e coli and salmonella tests might inversely impact wait times.

[JoeAltmaier]

And who handles the ingredients improperly? Doesn't refrigerate them sufficiently? Uses expired ingredients? Fallible humans. Lets remove them from the equation.

[greedo]

Robotic slaughterhouses would still have problem keeping fecal matter out of meat. The best way of preventing most food illnesses is radiating the food, but our irrational society won't go for that.

[bpicolo]

Irradiation does have issues of it's own, like making things taste funky [0]

[0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03091...

[onion2k]

A robot chef is programmed by a human, so the human element has not been removed.

[nothrabannosir]

It has been reduced from O(n) to O(1), so much easier to check.

[horsecaptin]

Doesn't chew enough? Doesn't wash their hands before eating? Eats too much?

There's more to the equation! Robots feeding robots built by robots and programmed by robots! A clean solution for a clean planet earth!

[joezydeco]

If you think labor is what keeps fast food prices high, you are mistaken.

Most of the largest chains have pretty much automated nearly everything by now that's possible given reliability and safety standards. If you look in the kitchen of any McDonald's nobody is cooking or preparing the components. They're either pre-cut, loaded into dispensers, being cooked in a self-timing temperature-controlled fryer, or being cooked on a self-timing temperature-controlled clamshell grill. If you check out a Taco Bell, they've even eliminated the cooking part. It's all made off-site in large batches and rewarmed on the assembly line. Even the beloved Chipotle has moved to retherming their components where possible.

The human labor is merely in assembly and delivery. And automating that with robots is a generation away, if at all.

[JoeAltmaier]

Read the article! Its all about automating assembly and delivery.

[JoeAltmaier]

25% to 40% I see by labor statistics. That's quite a margin.

[Retric]

Food prep is a small portion of that, you also pay people to clean the bathrooms, take orders, handle inventory and disputes, etc. Food prep on it's own is almost a rounding error.

You might be getting 30 seconds of time from people making minimum wage for a combo, but that's about it and even at 15$/hour that's well under 15 cents per order.

[petra]

So that's around 1% of revenue? For a low margin business like restaurants that's probably worth it.

[crankylinuxuser]

In other words, humans are just disposable, self-healing robots that require minimal maintenance. And when they can no longer do the job, Right-to-Work laws summarily get rid of them.

[joezydeco]

Well, yes. That's called the service industry.

In their defense they also are quickly reconfigurable with visual and audible reprogramming options. I don't think you can get that Spyce robot to leave the kitchen and mop the floor when someone drops a drink. You also can't call in more robots when a bus full of high school kids shows up out of the blue.

Disposable, self-healing robots also do other things like assemble your iPhones and laptops but they're an ocean away so out of sight out of mind, right?

In some parts of the world service workers belong to unions that stand up for fair wages and working conditions. Where you live might not see that as viable or perhaps it conflicts with local religious or political views, so your conditions may vary.

[opencl]

All this does is dump the ingredients in a pot and mix them by spinning the pot. It's a hell of a long way off from making such advanced recipes as sandwiches or burritos. And at $7.50 it's rather expensive by fast food standards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc8D-CnDMiE

[chillingeffect]

I am personally very interested in developing a robot that is able to wield a knife and slice food, particularly healthy vegetables.

Here's a compilation video of various food robots from July 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRngacYpi7E

[Robotbeat]

Here's a robot that is able to wield two knives and "slice" vegetables: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBSEGqaK79M

[cgriswald]

Any price change will not be radical. Wages account for about 25% of the cost of fast food, but these robots are not free and any savings will result in price drops only if the price change also increases profits. Instead, more money may be spent on better ingredients or marketing. Do not expect a 25% price drop.

With regard to health and safety, the robots will provide only small benefit. Humans are better equipped (i.e., we have noses) to detect bad food; and in any case humans will still be involved in the handling, storage, and transportation of ingredients. Although disgusting, cases where the cook doesn't clean the grill properly and people get sick are much rarer than cases where the ingredients are already bad.

I suspect the main benefit of these robots to a fast food chain would be consistency in product and preparation times.

[JoeAltmaier]

The market will produce those that work savings into the price. We can't make blanket statements denying that?

The automated food industry is very, very good at producing quality safe food. And I reject that humans will still be storing nor handling food - a truck backs up, exchanges pallets with a food container carousel, the truck drives away with the empties. Robots all the way!

[cgriswald]

You can imagine the future however you like; however, as you chided a sibling poster, "read the article." The technology on offer does not do those things.

But yes, I think you can make a blanket statement that decisions will be made on the margins and any savings to the consumer will be incidental.