Burger robot poised to disrupt fast food industry

Has there been an update to this project or are they still in the &#x27;hope people give us money to open up a restaurant staffed by robots&#x27; phase?<p>Their website doesn&#x27;t appear to have changed since 2012 (when I first heard about and was excited to see that their restaurant was &#x27;coming soon&#x27;. It is a shame that they haven&#x27;t yet done so.

Does anyone have a video of this thing? I can&#x27;t find anything.

There have been ramen-making robots for years. This isn&#x27;t a disruption at all. There isn&#x27;t anything to see here until we read a headline that McDonalds will pilot it in N stores for 6 months.

It&#x27;s a cool machine, and I&#x27;d buy a burger from it for the novelty factor, but I&#x27;m not sure the economics of it stack up. For each burger sold, the staffing cost is probably no more than 10 cents. This machine would have to be sold rather cheaply to be able to replace those staff.<p>I&#x27;ve never had a problem with service time in most fast food restaurants, so I&#x27;m not sure this will improve experience for the customer. It&#x27;d be cool to see something like this applied to busy bars, where it could make any drink you wanted.

Automation tends to hit at the middle, not the bottom.<p>For example, blacksmiths got replaced by automation. Highly skilled labor, replaced by machines + lower&#x2F;unskilled labor.<p>Burger automation is the fantasy of automating all the way to the bottom of the skill pile. But I would put my money on new waves of automation that disrupt skilled labor. There may come a day when we reach the bottom of the pile and utopia&#x2F;dystopia is realized, but I don&#x27;t think that day is today.

<i>&gt; Of course, businesses are free to spend their savings however they like. For some, that may mean more quality ingredients or services. For others, it might be competing with other restaurants by maintaining the same level of service and ingredients but offering even lower food prices.</i><p>Or it could mean management just stuffing the money into their pockets. Somehow I think this is the most likely outcome.

Momentum is hiring! - Embedded systems and computer vision experts<p>Company: Momentum Machines makes the most advanced culinary robots in the world. Our first device is capable of making gourmet quality hamburgers from start to finish with no human interaction. The efficiency savings of our technology alone can cut the price of high quality food in half, making it affordable for the first time to the vast majority of Americans. This fundamental shift in the cost equation is augmented by improved quality, precision, customizability, sanitation, and consistency to the restaurant industry, ultimately reinventing the customer experience.<p>Team and position: We are a team of Stanford and Berkeley educated engineers with roots in machine design, robotics, and restaurant operations. Currently, we are searching for an experts in embedded systems and computer vision as our team grows. Please feel free to email us at callings@momentummachines.com if you would like more information.

The reality of labor replacement is that low skill workers are likely to be the very last group to be replaced. The reason for that is how low they are paid and how expensive physical manufacturing and upkeep of machines are.<p>Middle management and entry to mid level white collar work are by far the most susceptible. Also, lower end knowledge jobs. Current trends show low skilled workers getting cheaper and raw materials getting more expensive so at least for the near term, low skill worker replacement appears highly unlikely.<p>Much like the late 90&#x27;s mid and low level computer programers etc will likely be eliminated, or reduced to a low skill job, long before low skill workers are replaced by machines.

Big burnt bits on the bun isn&#x27;t a good way to say that it does it well though...

I want one of these in my home kitchen in ten years. Further, I&#x27;d love to see the same effort applied to many many common dishes: a pasta-bot, ramen-bot, sandwhich-bot etc..<p>This company hopefully does the work to ID each bot-module needed for dishes that are just a combination of separate ingredients that require little preparation at the time you&#x27;re assembling the dish.<p>Also, this thing is IDEAL for stadiums and high-density events. Every stadium should have one.<p>This will also be awesome for food trucks. Every military will probably invade for this.<p>THis device will succeed assuming it is real, but that doesnt mean it would replace fast food restaurants.

So instead of paying some bozo minimum wage to flip burgers, you have to pay someone to fix the burger robot every time it screws up. Which it probably will, frequently, because it&#x27;s got a zillion moving parts and a bunch of loose messy ingredients which can get stuck in them.<p>Replacing people with robots works great if you&#x27;re replacing large numbers at the same factory, because firing workers and hiring robot repairmen still saves you a lot of money. If you&#x27;re only going to replace one or two workers per site, though, it sounds pointless.

Okay, this makes a burger, and let&#x27;s assume it can handle all the variations a normal place would want.<p>I don&#x27;t just order burgers. Fries, drinks, ice cream, chicken, salads, wraps, and many more, are the typical items on a fast food menu. Perhaps in really busy stores there is a person dedicated to burgers and nothing else, but would this really reduce the amount of labor you would need? I suspect not (I have no data to back that up).<p>Sooner or later all of this will be automated - this machine, by itself, isn&#x27;t going to make much of a dent in my opinion.

This is super exciting. Would the people who argue against this machine on the basis that it replaces human workers also argue against the use of robots to produce cars and computers to replace secretaries? Yes, some people lose their jobs in the short term, but in the long term the asset reallocation that goes on in the economy actually creates more jobs than it destroys. Plus, who doesn&#x27;t want a more sanitary, cooked-to-order, more customizable burger rather than the microwaved shit we get at the low-end fast food restaurants today?<p>The company even addresses the issue on its website: &quot;The issue of machines and job displacement has been around for centuries and economists generally accept that technology like ours actually causes an increase in employment. The three factors that contribute to this are 1. the company that makes the robots must hire new employees, 2. the restaurant that uses our robots can expand their frontiers of production which requires hiring more people, and 3. the general public saves money on the reduced cost of our burgers. This saved money can then be spent on the rest of the economy. We take these issues very seriously so please feel free to tell us how we can help with this transition.&quot;<p>We don&#x27;t need to take them at their word because something like this is inevitable anyway. We just need to enjoy the burgers!

Well, you will still need employees on the premise to refill the machine, serve drinks and collect the cash. In a local BurgerKing, there are three employees: one shift lead, a cashier and a cook.<p>So the labor costs will not lower significantly, but the quality will increase.

I find it hard to believe that installation + maintenance + unexpected maintenance + still some people to prepare ingredients would be cheaper than cooks.<p>24 square feet sounds impressive though.

They&#x27;ll get infested with stainless steel rats in no time.

When was the last time you walked into a fast food burger place and heard sizzling in the background? I haven&#x27;t taken the time to find out but I do know that, in the rare times I visit a Burger King or Jack-in-the-Box, I have not seen anyone &#x27;flipping burgers&#x27; but, instead, grab them out of what looks like a steamer. So my suspicion is, no cooking takes place for burgers, at least.<p>Can anyone verify that?