WASHINGTON, March 9, 2017 — They won’t be Arnold Schwarzenegger look-alikes, but they may be flipping your burgers in the very near future.
According to the Daily Caller, a robotic burger flipper imaginatively named “Flippy” has mastered the fine art of cooking the perfect burger and has just started its job at a Pasadena, California fast-food chain called CaliBurger.
We should remember the epic words uttered by Kyle Reese, who traveled from the future to warn Sarah Connor in the first Terminator movie (1984). He described the prime operating directive of the Terminator: “Listen, and understand! That Terminator is out there! It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop … ever.”
Apply that description to the new and ever improving line of robotic fast food workers and you can see why they are so attractive to a Burger King, McDonalds or Wendy’s franchise owner.
These robotic workers have no ego and no emotions. They won’t ever cop an attitude when it comes to work assignments; they will never call in sick, take a smoke break, speak rudely to a customer or demand a raise. They will work relentlessly, and never ask for overtime.
David Zito, CEO of Miso Robotics believes that these robot workers are the future of the fast food service industry. For the #FightFor15 fast-food workers who want $15 an hour for entry-level work, these robots are an existential threat. Those entry-level fast-food jobs will be on the chopping block in three or less. Zito told the Mirror, “Much like self-driving vehicles, our system continuously learns from its experiences to improve over time.”
Not so long ago, a customer had to walk upon to the counter and give the fast food worker his order. Those days are about to melt into the past with the advent of ordering kiosks. The customer makes his selections on a screen, and a cooked-to-order burger and fries are delivered without any order mix up or confusion.
Instead of needing hours of on-the-job training, Flippy will be ready to cook immediately after installation. Your order will go from kiosk to Flippy in a fraction of a second, and you’ll get a hamburger prepared with absolute consistency.
It looks like a two-point flip for the AI empowered fast food worker.
CaliBurger is planning to have its non-smack talking robot installed permanently in 2018 and expand installation to more than 50 CaliBurger restaurants around the globe by the end of 2019.
