It can hard to find restaurant workers lately, particularly for fast-food chains where the jobs can be long, hot, and greasy. One of the more thankless jobs is probably flipping burgers and fries. It’s boring, repetitive, and carries an everyday risk of burns from hot oils. But now, CaliBurger (California) has deployed a robotic assistant to flip burgers and fries. The robotic arm, aptly named “Flippy,” is the product of Miso Robotics in Pasadena.
Flippy is billed as the world’s first autonomous robotic kitchen assistant that can learn from its surroundings. It can work a grill or fryer, cooks perfectly and consistently every time, collaborates with kitchen staff, and is OSHA safety-compliant. Now ‘employed’ by CaliBurger, the company plans to launch 50 more Flippys at additional locations. Flippy can make 300 burgers a day, all without burns or complaints for additional break times!
Flippy’s role hasn’t been an easy one. Similar to many human workers, Flippy was ‘fired’ in the spring and had to be retrained to work better with humans. Flippy has been a popular draw for the restaurant though; they have been overwhelmed by the response by customers who want to see Flippy in action. The robotic arm isn’t cheap though. Flippy costs between $60,000 – $100,000.
But then again, Flippy never asks for a day off!
Group Activities and Discussion Questions:
- Poll students: Who was worked at a fast-food restaurant? What was the experience like for them?
- View videos at Miso Robotics: https://misorobotics.com/
- View CaliBurger: https://caliburger.com/in-the-news
- Review the buying process for organizations.
- For Miso Robotics have students work on the actions taken in each of the five steps.
- Consider assigning different student groups to work on different target markets. Then the process for the different target markets can be compared and contrasted.
- Debrief the exercise.
Source: Wall Street Journal, Forbes, USA Today, other sources
