Burger fans in Pasadena, California will soon get to taste the future of fast food: a patented, AI-powered, short-order-cooking robot named Flippy.
Flippy’s makers said the new dining spot will be ‘the world’s first operating restaurant where both ordering and every single cooking process are fully automated.’
In addition to Flippy, responsible for deep frying chicken nuggets and French fries, a fellow ‘BurgerBot’ will be grilling up patties, and a biometric payment system, PopID, will take customers’ orders.
While Flippy got its first job in the fast food industry back in 2017, serving at 50 CaliBurger restaurants after training, the new ‘CaliExpress by Flippy’ will be the first time the rail-mounted mechanical arm will get to work with more of its own kind.
Burger fans in Pasadena, California will soon get the chance to taste the future of fast food: a patented, AI-powered, short-order-cooking robot named Flippy cooking with its robot friends
Holding company Cali Group — which owns Miso Robotics, the firm behind Flippy — said it hoped the new CaliExpress will ‘inspire the next generation of kitchen AI and automation entrepreneurs’ by offering educational tours and robotics exhibits.
‘The CaliExpress by Flippy location will also be a pseudo-museum experience presented by Miso Robotics,’ the company said in a statement.
‘Including dancing robot arms from retired Flippy units, experimental 3D-printed artifacts from past development, photographic displays, and much more.’
Cali Group said it wanted to encourage local schools and educational groups to reach out for tours of the soon-to-open fast-food restaurant.
The company had expected to open CaliExpress by Flippy this month, according to Forbes, but a spokesman now tells the financial news publication that the Pasadena location will be ‘opening soon’ in 2024.
While fast food and fast casual restaurants as diverse as Wendy’s, IHOP, Chipotle, and Sweetgreen have all been busy integrating AI into their operations, critics have expressed concern over the human and economic costs.
Miso Robotics, a California-based company, built a kitchen bot called Flippy capable of cooking 300 burgers daily. Flippy then expanded into whipping up fries
The company had expected to open CaliExpress by Flippy this month, according to Forbes, but a spokesman now tells the financial news publication that the Pasadena location will be ‘opening soon’ in 2024
Valyant AI founder Rob Carpenter told Fox News this May that millions of jobs will likely be lost over the next five to 10 years as robots and computer kiosks replace most fast food roles.
‘We are going to see AI jump from back-office processing and manufacturing facilities to consumer-facing, front-facing, traditionally human-only jobs,’ the AI entrepreneur said.
‘This is definitely a watershed moment for artificial intelligence,’ Carpenter noted.
And top tech executives, researchers and academics, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, have spent the past year of raging AI debate raising the ‘risk of extinction from AI.’
Built by Miso Robotics, a food services startup from Pasadena, California, Flippy is now capable of working an entire fry station and can do over twice as many food preparation jobs as the first Flippy, including basket filling, emptying, and returning – according to the firm
‘Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,’ more than 350 signatories wrote in a letter published by the nonprofit Center for AI Safety (CAIS).
As well as Altman, they included the CEOs of AI firms DeepMind and Anthropic and executives from Microsoft and Google.
The members of Cali Group have been much more optimistic about the promise and potential of their AI-powered, robotic cooks.
‘The marriage of these various technologies to create the most autonomous restaurant in the world is the culmination of years of research, development, and investment in a family of revolutionary companies,’ said PopID CEO John Miller, who does double duty as a board member of Miso Robotics.
‘AI-powered, robotic order-taking and cooking enables the major chains that feed America to substantially improve quality, consistency and speed,’ CEO Miso Robotics CEO Rich Hull said in the firm’s CaliExpress announcement.
‘Miso is proud to partner with Cali Group and PopID to make CaliExpress by Flippy a reality,’ the executive added.
‘Flippy has been an incredible success story, and now everyone in Southern California can come take a look — and a taste — for themselves.’
This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk
