WORLDWIDE


ROBOTIC KITCHENS


cooks, sees how it responds to heat, and adapts its process in a semi-intelligent way, then it will be more like human brain replacement,” says Radford. Sally, a robot that assembles custom


salad bowls on-demand from fresh ingredients, attracted attention when it was first launched. However, in July 2022 it was announced that its creator, Chowbotics, would be shut down by new owner DoorDash, which reported that the robot has not met expectations. Pazzi Robotics has come to the


market with a fully autonomous pizza restaurant, which uses a cloud-connected software and machine learning platform with robotic modules to handle the challenging task of making, shaping and cooking pizza dough.


“Truebird has launched the Micro- Cafe coffee machine in Seattle that is true robotics,” says Radford. “It is a hidden robot and one of the most beautiful pieces of engineering I’ve seen. It takes a coffee cup with floating pucks, moves it through the system, makes the coffee, and delivers it with an element of theater.” “These inventions all primarily


revolve around speed of service and cost of production,” says Halabi. “One unit that always comes to mind is the pancake dispenser sometimes found in airport lounges or hotel breakfast areas. With a click of a button, batter is poured onto a hot plate and a cooked pancake is dispensed a few seconds later. Think of the cost savings when compared to a fully serviced pancake breakfast station.” “Covid was a big driver,” says Bill Bender


FCSI, founder and principal of W.H. Bender & Associates. “There has been a rush to increase the minimum wage, which is now $15 per hour in California, so costs are rising, which leads to cutbacks in staff. But you still have to get the job done. Then Covid hits, and it is hard to find and keep employees, so there is increased cost pressure and a shortage of employees. The driver is to keep labor costs down and address shortages of labor.” UK-based technology company


Karakuri has created the Semblr robot, which produces personalized hot and cold meals with complete accuracy of


portion size, giving customers total traceability of ingredients, nutrients, calories and quantity for every meal. Able to create 110 meals per hour, it optimizes scarce human resources, thus improving thin margins by controlling costs. Semblr is being proven at the headquarters of Ocado, where facilities management company Atalian Servest is in charge of feeding 4,000 staff. As the world’s first installation of foodservice robotics in a large, high-volume catering environment, it is a crucial proving ground for foodservice robots. “We had to develop the technology to dispense food, which is hard to work with, as it changes over time, there are different viscosities and textures, and it is hard to hold it and serve it in a presentable way,” says Amelia Jonas, director of product


at Karakuri. “Fresh salsa with coriander and chilli, for example, was a real challenge. It can’t be served in a great clump.” Semblr gives Ocado’s employees lots of choice in what goes into their meals,


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14