Fast food companies are very public in their dreams of firing employees and replacing them with robots. We’ve previously pointed out a few problems with the concept, but the march of progress is relentless, and Momentum Machines is hoping to show their robots can flip burgers with the best of them.
Momentum has been trying to get its burger-bot in front of restaurants and other companies for a while. They claim it can pay for itself inside a year, and it’s capable of grinding meat, slicing ingredients, and turning out up to 400 burgers an hour, right down to bagging them for the customer. So they’re putting it to the test in their own restaurant.
Momentum has an ad for employees up on Craigslist, and perhaps the most telling aspect of it is, uh, there seem to be plenty of humans around the burgerbot. It looks like humans will be handling much of the on-site tasks, from hauling trash to doing payroll. This may explain the inertia surrounding this burgerbot, even as fast food restaurants complain about rising wages.
Still, the idea of a custom burgerbot definitely has a market, especially in places that may not have a lot of labor to go around, or in busy cafeterias. One can see the burgerbot being useful, but Momentum will have to prove it, and it will get the chance later this year.
(Via Eater)
