The manufacturing and military industries have long been the strongest drivers of technological advancement – the ARPANET evolved into the Internet, and industrial collaborative robots have become… “Flippy.”
In the video above, we see that Flippy consists of a unique burger-flipping end-effector attached to what appears to be a Universal Robots UR5 cobot. The cobot is attached to Flippy’s true body, which consists of a tower and camera system reminiscent of a light fixture. This build type allows a diverse and brand agnostic cobot compatibility.
Miso Robotics debuted Flippy recently at a CaliBurger restaurant in Pasadena, CA, flipping burgers and placing patties on buns alongside human staff. The technology seems to be inspired by the relationship between man and machine for pick-and-place applications.
Flippy’s artificial intelligence (AI) is designed to identify objects such as patties, buns, cheese and other ingredients separately, and to simultaneously and independently compute cooking requirements – such as how long a patty should remain on the grill before being flipped and plated.
Like the intent behind factory-working cobots, Flippy is intended to take over the more hazardous, tedious and time-sensitive kitchen-work tasks in a fast-food restaurant, without requiring an overhaul of the restaurant’s existing equipment.
"Much like self-driving vehicles, our system continuously learns from its experiences to improve over time," said David Zito, CEO of Miso Robotics.
"Though we are starting with the relatively 'simple' task of cooking burgers, our proprietary AI software allows our kitchen assistants to be adaptable and therefore can be trained to help with almost any dull, dirty or dangerous task in a commercial kitchen — whether it's frying chicken, cutting vegetables or final plating."
"The application of artificial intelligence to robotic systems that work next to our employees in CaliBurger restaurants will allow us to make food faster, safer and with fewer errors," said John Miller, Chairman of Cali Group.
"Our investment in Miso Robotics is part of our broader vision for creating a unified operating system that will control all aspects of a restaurant from in-store interactive gaming entertainment to automated ordering and cooking processes, 'intelligent' food delivery and real-time detection of operating errors and pathogens," Miller added.
Miso Robotics plans to release Flippy across more than 50 CaliBurger restaurants worldwide by the end of 2019.
And so the natural order of things continues, as big industry’s successes with innovative technologies trickles down into everyday living. I wonder what mundane tasks will be automated next?
Leave your thoughts below and look for more information on the Miso Robotics website.