Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Flippy The Robot Takes Over Burger Flipping At Pasadena Restaurant

Remember those days of flipping hamburgers as your first job in high school? It looks like those days might be at an end, as a local startup, Miso Robotics, and hamburger chain CaliBurger have unveiled a new robot, "Flippy", which uses artificial intelligence to grill burgers in Pasadena. CaliBurger, which so far as rolled out the robot just to Pasadena, says it plans to roll out the AI-driven robots to more than 50 restaurants worldwide by the end of 2019. Flippy, developed by Miso Robotics, uses computer vision and deep learning to handle what it calls the "hazardous, tedious and time-sensitive aspects of grilling" and "cooks burgers to perfection every time." CaliBurger said that it will "redeploy" some of the staff that would be flipping burgers "to the dining room to engage more with customers" and that it would "retrain certain staff" to operate Flippy. Miso Robotics is led by David Zito, and says its staff comes from Caltech, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Art Center and UNC Chapel Hill. (video of Flippy embedded below)

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