[joezydeco]

The video that exists shows the Flippy only making french fries [1]. No burger cooking at all. And if you've seen how they do the burgers at WC [2], that's no small task for a robot yet.

The french fry station looks like an ideal place to start, anyway, since it's usually a task that doesn't get a dedicated worker unless the place is extremely busy. In the quieter times it's something nobody has time to work or monitor while doing other things. And then, suddenly, everyone is waiting on the fries to finish.

From a more critical POV, it's kind of a kluge but at least a human can take over. There have been products for a long time [3] that are more self-contained and can do smaller batches of fries but need a hell of a lot more maintenance and cleaning.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB4vFRcCN-4

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSYlFMylrWI&t=1m14s

[3] https://www.autofry.com/

[vageli]

> No burger cooking at all. And if you've seen how they do the burgers at WC [2], that's no small task for a robot yet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSYlFMylrWI&t=1m14s

From the video, it actually seems as though White Castle burgers are even more optimized for process automation as their preparation doesn't even require flipping (TIL).

[joezydeco]

The water and onions are so messy that it actually would be a hinderance to automation. The bread would also need to be steamed somehow.

If you want to see flipless automation, McDonald's has been doing it this way for a few decades now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mj7_a1Egew

[giantg2]

Ah, older articles were talking about it doing burgers too at white castle. This one only mentions the fries but doesn't mention burgers. Looks like maybe they transitioned to fry station only?