The Future Is Here (BurgerBots)

[Kestra]

BurgerBots!

I embrace a burgerbot future and eagerly anticipate it. Let's hypothesize what could go wrong. The day they start demanding tips? Personally I think Amazon needs to put their robot army to work making burgers. Okay maybe I'm just obsessed with Amazon's robot army and it has nothing to do with burgerbots.

[ManOnTheWave]

The automat of the future! I'd try it at least once.

And yet I wonder how many jobs will be things like filling the machine, cleaning the machine, etc. which reminds me of the joke: "X number of people this year lost their jobs to robots. Luckily, X number of jobs were created in robot manufacturing."

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I for one welcome our new burgerbot overlords.

[Tom Hendricks]

As an aside, I ate at the newest Shake Shack today, in Garden City NY on Long Island. Their burgers are pretty good but their custard based shakes are the best.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Kestra wrote:

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Let's hypothesize what could go wrong. The day they start demanding tips?

RoboCop at McDonald's:

Directive 1 - Serve the public Quarter Pounders.
Directive 2 - Protect the secret sauce recipe.
Directive 3 - Uphold the law (no free containers of ketchup).

[J. Allen]

I would definitely like to try it at least once.

[Locutus of Bored]

Kestra wrote:

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BurgerBots!

I embrace a burgerbot future and eagerly anticipate it. Let's hypothesize what could go wrong.

[slackbladder]

bad idea.

[Locutus of Bored]

slackbladder wrote:

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bad idea.

Care to explain why? All of your posts around the forum have been extremely brief replies like this. It's kind of spammy and doesn't really invite discussion. It doesn't seem like you're doing it to quickly inflate your post count, so why not participate more and expand on your replies a bit?

[Mr. Laser Beam]

If a burgerbot malfunctions and makes the sandwich wrong, or some unsafe substance gets into the food, how will anyone know? In a fully automated restaurant there's no oversight.

[Locutus of Bored]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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If a burgerbot malfunctions and makes the sandwich wrong, or some unsafe substance gets into the food, how will anyone know? In a fully automated restaurant there's no oversight.

How much oversight is there in a minimum wage burger joint? It's not like people can instantly spot bacteria or completely prevent a worker from sneaking in a foreign substance.

The likelihood of the first would be dramatically less than human error, lack of cleanliness, deliberately messing with the food, and so forth, and the food is kept sealed until cooked or put on the burger, so the chance of foreign substances or bacteria getting on it is also greatly lessened compared to human prepared food.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Locutus of Bored wrote:

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How much oversight is there in a minimum wage burger joint?

At least they have managers. That's got to count for something. If a piece of equipment in a restaurant isn't working right, for example if one of the grills isn't heating up, a manager can catch it and shut it down and/or switch to another machine. If one of these burgerbots breaks, what happens then? In a restaurant with no employees, there will be no one to notice a machine that isn't working properly.

Unless these burgerbots are designed to automatically report their own malfunctions, which would definitely help.

[Locutus of Bored]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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At least they have managers. That's got to count for something. If a piece of equipment in a restaurant isn't working right, for example if one of the grills isn't heating up, a manager can catch it and shut it down and/or switch to another machine. If one of these burgerbots breaks, what happens then? In a restaurant with no employees, there will be no one to notice a machine that isn't working properly.

Unless these burgerbots are designed to automatically report their own malfunctions, which would definitely help.

I'm sure they have some self-diagnostic and reporting systems. Plus, in order to keep it stocked, they're going to have to be serviced regularly, so there will still be humans in the loop quite frequently.

[J. Allen]

Yep. Automated doesn't mean ignored. I think it's interesting, and hope something opens up out this way, because short of me going to California, I'm not going to have the chance to try one.

[Grey]

I doubt any restaurant that relied primarily on robots would eliminate all members of human staff.

Food preparers in fast food places were designed to be expendable (unfortunately), but not all jobs in the industry can be completed most efficiently with robots.

There are some things I think would run better automated, though, so overall I can't say I wouldn't like the idea.