So far, nobody has done a successful automated restaurant. There have been many attempts. The first was AMFare, built in 1964 by American Machine and Foundry, and it was better than most of its successors.[1] McDonalds tried and failed about a decade ago. Eatsa, the SF chain, is just an automat where you can't see the kitchen. Momentum Machines in SF has a prototype hamburger-customization machine, but hasn't shipped. There's a functioning pizza-making robot from Zume. So far, though, the hardware has a narrow functional range.
There's lots of automated food preparation in the plants that make frozen dinners and airline meals. But those,too, have a narrow product range.
A good place to start would be at the back end. Build a robotic system which can take a tub of random dishes, tableware, and trash, separate them, apply blasts of hot soapy water to anything that needs pre-cleaning for the dishwasher, load the dishwasher trays, and start them down the conveyor to the dishwasher. Everybody hates that job.
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So far, nobody has done a successful automated restaurant. There have been many attempts. The first was AMFare, built in 1964 by American Machine and Foundry, and it was better than most of its successors.[1] McDonalds tried and failed about a decade ago. Eatsa, the SF chain, is just an automat where you can't see the kitchen. Momentum Machines in SF has a prototype hamburger-customization machine, but hasn't shipped. There's a functioning pizza-making robot from Zume. So far, though, the hardware has a narrow functional range.
There's lots of automated food preparation in the plants that make frozen dinners and airline meals. But those,too, have a narrow product range.
A good place to start would be at the back end. Build a robotic system which can take a tub of random dishes, tableware, and trash, separate them, apply blasts of hot soapy water to anything that needs pre-cleaning for the dishwasher, load the dishwasher trays, and start them down the conveyor to the dishwasher. Everybody hates that job.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmXLqImT1wE
In france, picard does gourmet frozen foods, with very good reviews.